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DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOE 



WATER-SUPPLY 



AND 



IRRIGATION PAPERS 



UNITED STATES GEOLOGICAL SURVEY 



No. 3 



WATER RESOURCES OF THE LOWER PENINSULA 
OF MICHIGAN.— Lane 



WASHINGTON 

GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 
1899 



IRRIGATION REPORTS. 

The following list contains the titles and brief descriptions of the principal reports 
relating to water supply and irrigation, prepared by the United States G-eological 
Survey since 1890: 

1890. 

First Annual Report of the United States Irrigation Survey, 1890; octavo, 123 pp. 

Printed as Part II, Irrigation, of the Tenth Annual Report of the United States Geolog- 
ical Survey, 1888-89. Contains a statement of the origin of the Irrigation Survey, a pre- 
liminary report on the organization and prosecution of the survey of the arid lands for 
purposes of irrigation, and report of work done during 1890. 

1891. 

Second Annual Report of the United States Irrigation Survey, 1891; octavo, 395 pp. 

Published as Part II, Irrigation, of the Eleventh Annual Report of the United States 
Geological Survey, 1889-90. Contains a description of the hydrography of the arid region 
and of the engineering operations carried on by the Irrigation Survey during 1890; also 
the statement of the Director of the Survey to the House Committee on Irrigation, and 
other papers, including a bibliography of irrigation literature. Illustrated by 29 plates 
and 4 figures. 

Third Annual Report of the United States Irrigation Survey, 1891; octavo, 576 pp. 

Printed as Part II of the Twelfth Annual Report of the United States Geological Sur- 
vey, 1890-91. Contains " Report upon the location and survey of reservoir sitet during the 
fiscal year ended June 30, 1891," by A. H. Thompson; "Hydrography of the arid regions," 
by P. H. Newell; and "Irrigation in India," by Herbert M. Wilson. Illustrated by 93 plates 
and 190 figures. 

Bulletins of the Eleventh Census of the United States upon irrigation, prepared 
by F. H. Newell; quarto. 

No. 35, Irrigation in Arizona; No. 60, Irrigation in New Mexico; No. 85, 
Irrigation in Utah; No. 107, Irrigation in Wyoming; No. 153, Irrigation in 
Montana; No. 157, Irrigation in Idaho; No. 163, Irrigation in Nevada; No. 178, 
Irrigation in Oregon; No. 193, Artesian wells for irrigation; No. 198, Irriga- 
tion in Washington. 

1893. 

Irrigation of western United States, by F. H. Newell; extra census bulletin No. 
23, September 9, 1892; quarto, 22 pp. 

Contains tabulations showing the total number, average size, etc., of irrigated holdings, 
the total area and average size of irrigated farms in the subhumid regions, the percentage 
of number of farms irrigated, character of crops, value of irrigated lands, the average cost 
of irrigation, the investment and profits, together with a resume of the water supply and 
a description of irrigation by artesian wells. Illustrated by colored maps showing the 
location and relative extent of the irrigated areas. 

1893. 

Thirteenth Annual Report of the United States Geological Survey, 1891-92, Part 
III, Irrigation, 1893; octavo, 486 pp. 

Consists of three papers: "Water supply for irrigation," by F. H. Newell; "American 
irrigation engineering" and "Engineering results of the Irrigation Survey," by Herbert 
M. Wilson; and "Construction of topographic maps and selection and survey of reservoir 
sites," by A. H. Thompson. Illustrated by 77 plates and 119 figures. 

A geological reconnoissance in central Washington, by Israel Cook Russell, 1893; 
octavo, 108 pp., 15 plates. Bulletin No. 108 of the United States Geological 
Survey; price, 15 cents. 

Contains a description of the examination of the geologic structure in and adjacent to 
the drainage basin of Yakima River and the great plains of the Columbia to the east of 
this area, with special reference to the occurrence of artesian waters. 

1894. 

Report on agriculture by irrigation in the western part of the United States at the 
Eleventh Census, 1890, by F. H. Newell, 1894; quarto, 283 pp. 

Consists of a general description of the condition of irrigation in the United States, the 
area irrigated, cost of works, their value and profits; also describes the water supply, the 
value of water, of artesian wells, reservoirs, and other details; then takes up each State 
and Territory in order, giving a general description of the condition of agriculture by irri- 
gation, and discusses the physical conditions and local peculiarities in each county. 

Fourteenth Annual Report of the United States Geological Survey, 1892-93, Part 
II, Accompanying papers, 1894; octavo, 597 pp. 

Contains papers on "Potable waters of the eastern United States," by W. J. McG-ee; 
"Natural mineral waters of the United States," by A. C. Peale; and "Results of stream 
measurements," by F. H. Newell. Illustrated by maps and diagrams. 

(Continued on third page of cover.) 
IRR30 



DEPARTMENT OF THE INTEEIOK 



WATER-SUPPLY 



AND 



IRRIGATION PAPERS 



OF THE 



UNITED STATES GEOLOGICAL SURVEY 



ISTo. SO 




WASHINGTON 

GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICJJ 
1899 



.A 



\ 




UNITED STATES GEOLOGICAL SUKVEY 

CHARLES 1). WALCOTT, DIRECTOR. 



WATER RESOURCES 



OF THE 



LOWER PENINSULA OF MICHIGAN 



BY 



/ 



ALFRED 0. LANE 




WASHINGTON 

. \ • - 

GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 
1899 • \ 



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V 



6 



53488 



CONTENTS 



Page. 

Letter of transmittal _. 9 

Various uses of water 11 

Uses where quantity is important 12 

Transportation on the Great Lakes 12 

Navigation on the smaller lakes and rivers 13 

Log driving _ _ 13 

City uses 14 

Uses where head is important 17 

Water powers in Michigan 18 

Report on the run-off and water power of Kalamazoo River, by 

Robert E. Horton 22 

Geology and topography 22 

Rainfall and meteorology 26 

Relation of lake level to rainfall . 29 

Run-off, rainfall, and water power , 30 

High water at Kalamazoo - 35 

Water power _ 37 

Water power of Huron River. . _ 38 

Developed power _.. 39 

Undeveloped power 41 

Water power of Raisin River 41 

Uses where quality is important . 41 

Drinking .. 41 

Inorganic impurities 41 

Organic impurities 42 

Dairy use 43 

Cooking, laundry, boilers _._' 44 

Sugar-beet industry 46 

Photography and other uses. _ 46 

Quality and quantity compared. 47 

Climate 48 

Long-period variations in rainfall 54 

Short-period fluctuations in water level 55 

Well temperatures ._ 56 

Superficial geology and topography. 57 

General description 57 

Lakes of Lower Michigan 64 

Wells in the Pleistocene 67 

Methods of sinking wells 69 

Eastern shore district 70 

Saginaw Valley district... 71 

Northeastern shore district _ . 73 

Western shore district 75 

North central district 76 

5 



b CONTENTS. 

Page. 
Superficial geology and topography — Continued. 

Saginaw moraine district _ _ _ 76 

South central district , 77 

Deeper wells and Paleozoic stratigraphy 77 

Carboniferous formation . 78 

Jackson coal measures to Marshall sandstone 78 

Carboniferous and Devonian shales •_ _ _ 84 

Lower Marshall sandstone 84 

Coldwater shales ._ .__ 84 

Berea shale and grit 84 

St. Clair black shales „ 85 

Lower Devonian and Upper Silurian limestones 86 

Traverse series (Hamilton) 86 

Dundee limestone (Upper Helderberg) 87 

Monroe and Salina beds (Lower Helderberg) _ _ . _ . _ 88 

Niagara and Clinton formations 89 

Hudson River and Utica shales 89 

Trenton limestone _ _". 90 

Rock structure and topography . . 90 

Prospects of rock wells 91 

Northern limestone district ... - 91 

Northern shale district _ _■ ... 92 

Coal basin 92 

Southern shale district 92 

Southeastern limestone district 94 

Acknowledgments 94 

Index .- 95 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 



Page. 

Plate I. Topographic map of Lower Michigan 16 

II. Map of the Pleistocene deposits ... 46 

III. A, Clinton boring apparatus; B, Field of onions in drained-lake 

bottom 54 

IV. Dutch Point sand spit, Grand Traverse Bay 66 

V. Barrier Beach connecting Empire Bluffs and Sleeping Bear 

Point, Lake Michigan 76 

VI. Geologic map of Lower Michigan, indicating also the topog- 
raphy of the rock surface „.„_.. - - 78 

VIL Index map of towns, indicating those where there are flowing 

wells and waterworks . _ . . , 90 

Fig. 1. Fluctuations in the level of Lake Michigan and the annual precipi- 
tation at Kalamazoo, Michigan 28 

2. Distribution of average minimum temperature in Michigan 50 

3. Distribution of average maximum temperature in Michigan 51 

4. Distribution of average mean temperature in Michigan 52 

5. Distribution of average annual precipitation in Michigan 53 

6. Sketch map of the drainage of Lower Michigan 61 

7. Diagram illustrating methods of stream capture 63 

8. Profile near Rose City, Michigan 68 

9. Diagram illustrating evils of insufficient casing 72 

10. Cross section of the Lower Michigan Basin 79 

11. Section of well at Midland, Michigan . . 82 

12. Geological column of Huron County, Michigan 85 

13. Section of well at Charlevoix, Michigan 87 

14. Map showing areas of shallow saline waters in Michigan 93 



LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL 



Department of the Interior, 
United States Geological Survey, 

Division of Hydrography, 

Washington, April 14-, 1899. 
Sir: I have the honor to transmit herewith a manuscript on the 
Water Resources of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan, by Dr. Alfred 
C. Lane, and to recommend that it be printed as one of the series of 
Water-Supply and Irrigation Papers. This material is a portion of the 
outcome of Dr. Lane's studies in connection with the geological sur- 
vey of the State of Michigan, supplemented by statements received in 
reply to circulars sent throughout the Lower Peninsula of Michigan 
to well drillers and others likely to be well informed and interested 
in the subject. The facts thus gathered have been collated with the 
result of two months' field work during the autumn of 1897. The 
complete report has assumed such bulk that it has been found neces- 
sary to divide it into several parts. The first of these, containing 
the general conclusions, is herewith presented. The remaining data 
fall naturally into two classes, the first consisting of analyses of 
waters and the second of detailed descriptions of the supply at vari- 
ous localities visited. It is hoped that these data may be printed as 
succeeding papers of this series. 

Yery respectfully, F. H. Newell, 

Hydrographer in Charge. 
Hon. Charles D. Walcott, 

Director United States Geological Survey. 

9 



WATER RESOURCES OF THE LOWER PENINSULA OF 

MICHIGAN. 



By Alfred C. Lane. 



VARIOUS USES OF WATER. 

The region under consideration is generously endowed with water 
supplies, but it is apparent from experience elsewhere that these may 
be wasted or seriously depreciated in value by carelessness or lack of 
knowledge of their extent and limitations. It is a common error to 
suppose that if the limit to the supply of anything is not clearly in 
sight that the supply is inexhaustible; for example, the "practically 
inexhaustible " supplies of pine of the Saginaw Valley of thirty years 
ago are now nearly gone, and instances are cited of the sale of privi- 
leges of cutting the stumps on land already cut over for sums greater 
than the tracts originally cost. "Inexhaustible supplies" of natural 
gas have failed; and, in short, it may be said that there is hardly a 
natural resource whose quantity or quality has not seriously deterio- 
rated through lavish use. 

In many parts of the United States formerly as well watered as 
Michigan there has been apparently a shrinkage of water supply. 
The streams which at one time carried considerable volumes of water 
throughout the year are now reported to be, during summer at least, 
nearly dry. Flowing wells have failed in many regions, either from 
faulty construction or from the multiplication of deep borings. In 
order, therefore, that it may be possible not only to utilize the water 
resources of the area under discussion to the fullest possible extent, 
but also to guard against causes of failure, it is desirable to bring 
together all of the information available, combining the facts and 
drawing broad conclusions. 

Although the uses of water are almost infinitely varied, yet all kinds 
of water are not equally available for all purposes. The wide range 
in the quantity of water and in its quality leads to an equal diversity 
in application; for example, Michigan, as a whole, being humid, water 
has little value for agriculture, irrigation being practically confined 
to the use of water from city supplies applied to lawns, flower beds, 
and rarely to fruit trees and market gardens. On the other hand, 

11 



12 WATER RESOURCES OF LOWER PENINSULA OF MICHIGAN. [No. 30. 

although water is so abundant consideration must be paid to its qual- 
ity; that is, to the amount and kind of organic or inorganic matter 
held in solution or suspension. Another matter of primary importance 
is the elevation of the water with reference to possible fall, or, in other 
words, the head available. Upon this latter feature depends whether 
it can be used as a source of power or whether power must be con- 
sumed in raising it. 

For certain uses practically the only thing desired is abundance 
of supply; for example, such city uses as fire protection, flushing 
sewers, and cleaning streets. The head required is generally obtained 
artificially. Only in exceptionally favored localities, such, for exam- 
ple, as those close to the edge of the moraine country on the lake ward 
side, is there head sufficient to obviate the use of pumps. This is the 
case in Hart, T. 15 K, R. 17 W. ; Rochester, T.3K, R. 11 E.; and 
Rose, T. 24 N., R. 3 E. 

There are other uses, however, in which quality is the first consid- 
eration; as, for instance, cooking and drinking. Finally, as a source 
of power water must, of course, have head. 

Thus the different sources of supply and the different uses have been 
classified, so that one may see at a glance the more important factors 
in a given use and the sources which best meet the requirements. 
The most difficult problems to solve, however, are those where many 
needs are to be met by one system ; where, as in a supply for a city, 
it is frequently necessary that ample quantity for fire protection and 
hose use should be combined with at least a good degree of organic 
purity for drinking purposes and, if possible, with sufficient purity 
from lime and inorganic salts to be available for laundry use and for 
boilers. Such cases require special consideration and often present 
very complex problems. 

USES WHERE QUANTITY IS IMPORTANT. 
TRANSPORTATION ON THE GREAT LAKES. 

The great extent of shore line and the use of the waters of the 
State for transportation require some notice, especially in their bearing 
on other water uses. Michigan is more cut up by the Great Lakes than 
any other State, having some 1,600 miles of shore line, and the com- 
merce on the Lakes is growing at a remarkable rate. The commerce 
past Detroit is greater than that past any other port in the world 
The harbor master of Sand Beach estimates that a boat passes within 
sight every five minutes, day and night. 

If commerce increases in the future as in the past, it may be doubt- 
ful whether the Great Lakes, and rivers like the St. Clair and Detroit, 
independent of the question of sewage emptied into them, will be suf- 
ficiently free from organic impurities to be available for city water 
supplies. At present the Great Lakes are the source of the water sup- 
ply of most of the cities and towns on their shores. 



lane.] USES OF WATER WHERE QUANTITY IS IMPORTANT. 13 

NAVIGATION ON THE SMALLER LAKES AND RIVERS. 

On many of the larger inland lakes, in which Michigan is so rich, 
and on some rivers tugs have been employed, mainly for pleasure or 
for towing logs. The lower parts of the rivers are used for harbors. 
Along the west shore, as at Manistee, Ludington, and Frankfort, the 
lower reaches of all the rivers are practically lakes. These lakes are 
separated from Lake Michigan b}^ sand bars, which often have to 
be cut, after which the lakes make good small harbors. In this way 
Charlevoix Harbor has been connected with Pine Lake by a short cut, 
and Cheboj^gan is located on a river the mouth of which serves as a 
harbor. In the part of the State tying between Traverse City and 
Cheboygan it has been possible, with some artificial aid, to establish 
an extensive system of inland navigation. It may be noted, too, that 
for a long distance from its mouth the Saginaw River and its various 
branches are practically at lake level. In fact the watershed between 
the Grand River and the Saginaw, near Ashley, is only about 87 feet 
above the lake level, so that if, as has been suggested, a canal were 
to be built to cut off the long northern voyage by the Straits of Mack- 
inac from Chicago and Milwaukee, it would be far easier to construct 
it along this line than any other. On the Michigan side Grand River 
is navigable nearly to Grand Rapids. Besides Saginaw River up to 
St. Charles, the mouths of Black River at Port Huron, of Thunder Bay 
River at Alpena, and of Huron River are used for short distances. 
Transportation by boat has, however, been checked along Saginaw 
River and other streams by their extensive use for the transportation 
of logs, to say nothing of the fact that they are very crooked. 

LOG DRIVING. 

A glance at the map will show that the branches of the Saginaw 
diverge in every direction, from north-northeast to east-northeast, and 
they have served to transport the pines to Saginaw and Bay City. For 
miles along their course the rivers have been packed solid with logs. 
Lumbermen's dams have been constructed along the headwaters, 
their object being to accentuate and regulate the floods. The Sagi- 
naw Valley has now, however, been converted into farming country, 
and Saginaw has its city water supply — which, fortunately, is not much 
used for drinking — from these rivers. In considering the use of the 
Saginaw and its branches for such purposes the fact must not be for- 
gotten that for a large part of the year they are stagnant water, with 
the current setting up and down with the changes in the wind and in 
the level of the bay, and that they are lined with rotting logs. It is 
no wonder that the analyses of such streams show much organic mat- 
ter. There are all along the shores of the peninsula, at the mouths 
of the more important streams, towns of considerable size which 
obtained their start as sawmill towns and which are, or were, supported 



14 WATER RESOURCES OF LOWER PENINSULA OF MICHIGAN, [no. 30. 

by the occupation of turning the logs floated down to them into 
merchantable lumber. The size of such towns is roughly propor- 
tional to the drainage area of the streams which furnish them their 
raw material and supply them with harbors. 

CITY USES. 

One of the most important uses of water is as a protection against 
fire, and this use has, indeed, called into existence most of the city 
water supplies. Many towns — e. g., Weston (T. 8 S., R. 3 E.) and 
Grayling (T. 26 N"., R. 3 W.) — now have their water supply in this 
first stage of development. 

Michigan towns are invariably built of wood, at least at first, and 
even the largest cities are composed chiefly of wooden buildings. 
Fire protection is consequently essential to the existence of the cities. 
Saginaw, Cheboygan, Ontonagon, and Bad Axe are but a few of the 
towns that have been devastated by fire. For fire protection the pre- 
requisite is an ample supply of water. The necessary head is nearly 
always obtained artificially, partly by the use of steam pumps and 
partly by fire engines. A few of the smaller towns have sufficient 
natural head. 

To insure an ample supply of water the fluctuations of level of the 
water surface must be taken into consideration, and not merely the 
seasonal fluctuations, but, if the Great Lakes are drawn on, the sud- 
den fluctuations to which they are peculiarly subject. The Saginaw 
River and its branches, as has been said, are at lake level and sub- 
ject to these fluctuations, the current running sometimes upstream 
and sometimes downstream. As the present waterworks are 
arranged, the water for both East and West Saginaw is taken from 
settling basins, and on at least one occasion, in the fall of 1895, 1 the 
level was lowered dangerously near that of the intake pipe. If water 
should fail in the midst of a fire like that which, on May 20, 1893, 
in a few hours destroyed property to the value of $650,000, the city 
would be practically destroyed. There is more than a mere chance 
of this coincidence, for, as will be shown later, low water may be 
caused by strong southwest winds. Such warm, dry, strong winds 
are likely to occur. In fact, such a wind is said to have been blowing 
50 miles an hour at the time of the fire just mentioned. If a dam 
were built across the river so as to check the reversal of its current, 
it would not only guard against this danger but would prevent the 
carriage of the sewage of the city into the water supply. The water 
of the regular supply at Saginaw is not fit to drink unless it is boiled 
or filtered, and the city has drilled 29 wells to the underlying sand- 
stones in order to obtain water suitable for drinking. 

The possibility of retreat below the level of intake is probably the 
only danger to be guarded against in the use of lakes and rivers for 

1 See Annual Beport of Water Board of East Saginaw, 1896, p. 10. 



lane.] CITY USES OF WATER. 15 

water supply for fire protection. The fluctuations of mean lake level 
have been about 7 feet during the century. To allow for exceptional 
low water due to strong winds, it would be well to have intake pipes 
at least 10 feet below high- water level. 

Almost all kinds of wells are likely to fail to satisfy the demands 
of the large towns, and one hears continually, in towns that are sup- 
plied from wells, of steps taken to procure more water. Often where 
the water supply is from wells, as at Mount Pleasant, the plant is 
so arranged that in fire emergency use may be made of some additional 
body of water for supplementary supply. But in such a case the 
water should be taken through a filter gallery, as otherwise there will 
be constant suspicion and complaint that the engineer is substituting 
the inferior supply, which of course he should not do without warning. 

However, the demand on a public water supply is very heavy, and 
in this demand the use of water with the garden hose, the only 
form of irrigation prevalent in Michigan, is no inconsiderable factor. 
Almost universally where a city water supply exists it is used with 
hose upon lawns and gardens. This use is generally lavish, though 
not infrequently checked somewhat by regulations limiting the use 
to certain hours, prohibiting the use of sprinklers all night, etc. 
Thus, in Saginaw, where the city water supply is little used for 
drinking, an average of 6,678,651 gallons a day were pumped in the 
year ending February 29, 1896, which, for a population of 45,000 
(18,000 users), is more than 148 (371) gallons per capita, a quantity 
much larger than has been considered necessary in England, viz, 30 
gallons a day per capita; and, as we have just said, well water is 
very largely used for domestic purposes. In East Saginaw, in the 
same year, 313,705,672 gallons were pumped in June and July, against 
263,225,916 in April and May (hours of fire pressure 26-J- to 18), while 
in West Saginaw the corresponding figures are 158,018,960 and 
132,089,771 (hours of fire pressure 14 to 13), showing an increase of 
nearly 20 per cent in summer use, largely through the use of garden 
hose. Besides these there are other considerable city uses — flushing 
sewers and urinals, washing sidewalks, windows, and streets, running 
water motors, etc. For all these the quality of the water is compara- 
tively unimportant. Indeed, the very sewage matter which renders it 
unfit for drinking, and the sulphates and carbonates of lime which ren- 
der it less available for laundry and boiler use, are an advantage, 
rather than otherwise, when sprinkled on gardens. The difficulty in 
city water supply arises in the antagonism of these two classes of uses — 
those which demand an indefinitely large supply regardless of quality, 
and those which require a high degree of purity. Michigan cities 
usually consume 100 to 200 gallons a day for each inhabitant. The 
introduction of meters would result in some saving. The use of gar- 
den hose is often lavish and in violation of rules. The use of a meter 
should be compulsory where garden hose is employed. Unfortunately, 



16 WATER RESOURCES OF LOWER PENINSULA OF MICHIGAN, [no. 30. 

the need of quantity has too often been considered alone, and even 
the most rudimentary precautions for purity have been neglected. 

West Saginaw takes its water direct from the river, under a dock 
close to the heart of the city and near a large sewer, the settling tank 
being 75 by 22 feet and the river current variable. The water is of a 
muddy-green color, with a good deal of bark floating around in the 
tank. Alma takes water from a mill race 300 feet above a sewer. 
There is no protection to the banks of the stream above. Both of 
these places, however, use almost exclusively for drinking purposes 
water from deep wells which comes under clay and is therefore safe. 
In Saginaw it is said that the salt water from the deeper wells has 
found its way into some of the shallower rock wells and contaminated 
them, and the waste bitterns go into the river. But individual wells, 
however numerous, are not an ideal supply for a large town, with the 
running here and there to neighbors, the possibility of some wells 
being too shallow to be safe, and the liability to contamination from 
dug wells. The Saginaw is so sluggish a stream that it is practically 
a pond. A plant situated as far up as the East Saginaw plant, there- 
fore, if the banks were bought for a "riverside park" and protected 
for a few miles, and if the reflux of water from the lower river were 
prevented, especially if there were a gravel bed instead of decaying 
planks between the settling tank and the river, might furnish a fairly 
satisfactory water supply; but one would probably not have to go 
far — not beyond Vassar — to secure an ample and pure supply in sand- 
stone. Analyses of these waters will be given in a later paper. Most 
of the other large cities are supplied from the Great Lakes, and seem 
to find no objection to that source, though Chicago's experience shows 
that there is a possibility of danger to be guarded against. 

Many towns, however, like Rochester, Birmingham, Hunt, Petoskey, 
Charlevoix, Harbor Springs, Bay View, and Cheboygan have found a 
sufficient supply in deep wells, and most towns of the State could be 
thus supplied if they were willing to give up the use for garden hose, 
motors, etc. The construction of a large reservoir to meet the extra 
heavy demand of summer might be feasible. One practicable way 
would be to limit the use of garden hose to a short time each day, 
during which time the reservoir or some inferior filtered source of 
supply could be drawn upon. It is an advantage of this plan that 
the efficacy of a gravel filter bed is immensely increased if it is not 
continuously in use. 

The use of water in our Michigan towns is extravagant, and the 
difficulty of securing a proper quality is correspondingly increased. 
For example, Bay City, with a population of about 33,000, besides 
the supply from wells, in 1896 used 197 gallons a day, about 5 per 
cent of which was through manufacturing meters, 5 per cent through 
domestic meters, and the rest at fixed rates. The special water sup- 
ply committee of the city council of Traverse City, 1897, George "W. 



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lane.] USES OF WATER WHERE HEAD IS IMPORTANT. 17 

Rafter, consulting engineer, figured upon supplying 100 gallons a day 
to a population three times the present. This is one of the most 
carefully studied of recent propositions and the report compares a 
number of typical city sources of supply. 

USES WHERE HEAD IS IMPORTANT. 

The use of water for motive power depends not only on the quan- 
tity, but also on the head. The total energy is expressed by the 
product of these two. There are two widely different conditions 
under which water is thus used. The one is where the head is first 
artificially obtained and the water is raised by pumping. In such 
cases the water acts merely as a distributor of power. In this way 
water is used in many of the cities and towns, running motors for 
light machinery, especially for elevators. The chief advantages are 
that it is ready at hand, quiet, noiseless, odorless, not dangerous, and 
convenient in every way. There is, however, considerable loss of 
head in narrow and crooked pipes, and it is not the most economical 
method of transmitting power, while the extra quantity of water 
needed makes the attainment of desirable quality far more difficult. 
Electricity may be expected to relieve our water systems of much of 
this burden of power transmission. The other use is where natural 
water power is utilized. In respect to natural water power, Michigan 
is much better situated than many adjacent States, though there are 
no very large streams except the international Detroit and St. Clair 
rivers, which are not dammed. 

A large area, both in the northern and southern part of the State, 
is more than 1,000 feet above tide, or say 400 feet above lake level. 
It will be noticed, too, from the contour map (PL I) and from fig. 10 
that the descent from the 1,000 to the 700-foot contour line is fre- 
quently quite rapid, and here is a great belt of water powers. 

In a few cases, as at Traverse City and around West Branch, flow- 
ing wells furnish such a volume of water as to be of considerable 
power. Around West Branch and Rose City such wells distribute 
water into the second stories of the houses, and at Traverse City, as at 
Harbor Springs, it has been proposed to use part of the water in a 
hydraulic ram to elevate the remainder. 

But the head of flowing wells is of most importance in saving the 
power, windmill or steam, which would otherwise be required to ele- 
vate the water. 

There are also many lakes — and these chiefly in the highest parts 
of the State — which help to steady the flow of the streams by acting 
as reservoirs, though many of them are quite variable in their water 
stage. For instance, Clam Lake, near Cadillac, is said to have 
varied more than 16 feet. Thus conditions are quite favorable to the 
development of water power in streams, and small water powers, 
suited for village waterworks, electric- light plants, country sawmills 
irr 30 2 



18 WATER RESOURCES OF LOWER PENINSULA OF MICHIGAN, [no. 30. 



and gristmills, etc. , are widely distributed along the edge of and in 
the morainal areas. Almost uniformly wherever, as explained later 
(p. 63), the earlier high-level Glacial drainage has been captured and 
diverted by streams which have worked back across the moraines, 
good sites for water powers may be found, though thus far the abun- 
dance of fuel and the relatively heavy first cost of waterworks improve- 
ments have retarded their development somewhat. 

WATER POWERS IN MICHIGAN. 

The following table of places where water powers have been observed 
or reported is doubtless very incomplete. More complete accounts 
are given of the two important regions which have been studied in 
greater detail. The southeastern part has been studied in connec- 
tion with the Tenth Census, and Kalamazoo River has been studied 
by Mr. Robert E. Horton. It must not by any means be inferred 
that the Huron and the Kalamazoo are, from the importance given 
to them, the most important water-power streams of the State. They 
are merely those of which the most is known, and the study of the 
Grand River system, and others equally important in the northern 
part of the State, would require more time and money than have been 
allotted to this paper. 

Water powers in Michigan. 

LAKE ERIE DRAINAGE. 



Stream. 


Location of power. 


Remarks. 


Raisin River 


Few above Adrian 

Dexter to Ypsilanti, 
mainly. 

Ypsilanti (5-foot fall) . . 




Huron River 


See Report on Water Powers, 
Tenth Census. See also Win- 
chell, G-eology of Washtenaw 
County, 1881, p. 19. 

Water power for waterworks 
pumping station. 

Grist mill. About 10-foot fall. 


Do.... 

Do 


Do 




Underwear factory. 


Do.. 


Pettibone mills, Milford 
Below Hudson. 


Paper mill. 


Tiffin River 


Small. 







DETROIT RIVER DRAINAGE. 



River Rouge (Ecorce 
River). 




Above Plymouth; small flow, 
considerable fall. 



LAKE ST. CLAIR DRAINAGE. 



Clinton River 




Above Utica are numerous 
small powers. 



WATER POWERS IN MICHIGAN. 



19 



Water powers in Michigan — Continued. 
ST. CLAIR RIVER DRAINAGE. 



Stream. 


Location of power. Remarks. 


Belle River. 






Mill Creek 


Below Yale . . ... ... 


Black River 




Poor power; a stream of dimin- 
ishing drainage area; swamps 
being cleared and summer 
drought becoming accentu- 
ated. 







THUMB OF MICHIGAN. 



Allen Creek 


Rock Falls... 


10-foot head; not much water; 


Willow River 


Huron 


abandoned. 
Abandoned. 


Pinnebog River 


Near Popple 


Not used; drainage area grow- 
ing, but the swamps are being 
cleared. 

Not used. 


Pigeon River 


Above Wolf ton _ 







SAGINAW RIVER DRAINAGE. 



Cass River . 




A stream of diminishing drain- 
age and sandy course. 
Undeveloped. 
4-foot fall. 


Do ---. 


Caro 

Vassar 


Do 


Flint River 


Flint to Columbiaville. 
Owosso 


Good power near Flint. 


Shiawassee River . . 


Do 


Corunna. . . 

St. Louis and Alma, up 
to Millbrook. 

Mount Pleasant 

Barry ton 


10-foot fall. 


Pine River _ 


At St. Louis dam; at Alma a 


Chippewa River. 

Do 


dam with 10-foot head helps 
run elevator and waterworks. 

15-foot fall runs waterworks, 
electric-light plant, and ele- 
vator. 

Dam; 8-foot fall. 


Salt River 




Tobacco River 


Farwell and Clare. .... 




Tittabawassee River 


Very sandy and sluggish, except 
at head waters. 







20 WATER RESOURCES OF LOWER PENINSULA OF MICHIGAN, [no. 



• Water powers in Michigan — Continued. 
LAKE HURON DRAINAGE NORTH OF SAGINAW RIVER. 



Stream. 


Location of power. 


Remarks. 


Rifle River 




Good mill stream. 


Houghton Creek 


Rose City 


10-foot dam. 


Au Gres River _ 




Small stream, with considerable 






valleys and fall where cross- 






ing the 200-foot contour line. 


Au Sable River. _ . . 


Especially through 


Splendid water powers; unused, 




the stretch from 


largely fed by springs, with 




Mio toT. 24 N., R. 


a comparatively small flood 




6E. 


plain. 


Do... 


Grayling 


Dam. 


Thunder Bay River 


Alpena. Numerous _ . _ 


Brodwell's mills and Trow- 
bridge's mills. ) 


Cheboygan River 


Long Rapids to Hill- 
man. 


Little fall. 


Oqueoc River 






Sturgeon River. 


Sec. 3, T. 34N.,R. IE. 


Mill. 


Rainy River 




Probably some powers; rock 




- 


banks. 


Pigeon River. 






Mulletts River 


Wolverine to Trow- 
bridge. 









LAKE MICHIGAN DRAINAGE. 



Bear River 


Petoskey 


Ingalls mills. 

Other similar small streams to 


Boyne River 


Bovne Falls 






southwest. 


Elk River 


Elk Rapids. 


Wing dam and undershot 






wheel; put in as early as 1850; 






note the very large lake drain- 






age; steady power. 


Duck Lake 


Outlet 


9-foot fall; 60-70 horsepower 






used. 


Boardman River 




Variable; near Traverse City 
20-foot head; flow in drought 
about 100 cubic feet a second. 
See p. 31. 


Carp River 




Outlet of Carp Lake; 5 to 6 foot 






fall. 


Betsie River _. 


Weldon Township 




Do 


Benzonia 





LANE.] 



WATER POWERS IN MICHIGAN. 



21 



Water powers in Michigan — Continued. 
LAKE MICHIGAN DRAINAGE-Continued. 



Stream. 


Location of power. 


Remarks. 


Crystal Creek 


Outlet of Glen Lake . . 


2 or 3 powers. 


Manistee River 


Lower part 




Sandy valley; drainage area di- 








minishing; numerous small 








mill sites; quite variable. 


South Branch 






Rapid fall below Tustin. 


Little Manistee River _ . 






Big Sable River 






Notepseakan River 






White River . 






Muskegon River 


Newaygo 




Do... 


Big Rapids 


30-foot fall; large stream; stead- 








ied inflow by lakes and 








springs; furniture factories, 








etc. 


Crockery Creek 








Rabbit River. 






Kalamazoo River 




See report by Robert E. Horton, 








pp. 22-38. 


Coldwater River 








Hog Creek 






Fawn River 


Near Burrows 






Grand River 


Grand Rapids. 




Large manufacturing power. 


Flat River 


Fallassburg . 


35-foot fall between here and 








at Lowell. 


Rouge River 








Bear Creek. _ 


Cannon, T. 8 N. 


R.10W 


200-foot fall in 12 miles. 


Apple Creek 


Caledonia, T. 5N..R. 






10W. 






Do.... 


Alpine, T. 8 N., 


R.12W 


Tributaries of Grand River; 






mill sites in eastern part. 


Thornapple River 


Cascade,T.6N. 


R.10W 


Fine water power. 


Do 


Whitneyyille _ 






Cedar Creek. 






Good mill stream. 


Do 


Ada 




Two mills. 


Buck Creek 






Mill stream. 


Grand River 


Grand Ledge 


Factories. There are numerous 








small powers among the head- 








waters of the Grand. 


Do. 


North Lansing 




9-foot fall . Also a dam at South 


Do 


Eaton Rapids . 




Lansing. 



22 WATER RESOURCES OF LOWER PENINSULA OF MICHIGAN, [no. 

Water powers in Michigan — Continued. 
LAKE MICHIGAN DRAINAGE— Continued. 



30. 



Stream. 


Location of power. 


Remarks. 


Grand River 


Jackson : 


Dams; about 10-foot head. 


Paw Paw River 


Almena,T.2S.,R13W 


Spring Brook, one of the head- 
waters, has 18-foot head run- 
ning a saw and feed mill, about 
821 cubic feet a day; lowers 
5 or 6 inches a day, but fills up 
over night. The brook starts 
in a big spring 1 mile away 
and passes through two lakes. 
Adjacent brooks furnish sim- 
ilar powers of local value. 



REPORT ON THE RUN-OFF AND WATER POWER OF KALAMAZOO RIVER. 



By Robert E. Horton. 



GEOLOGY AND TOPOGRAPHY. 

The Kalamazoo River rises in the south central part of the Lower 
Peninsula of Michigan and flows in a northwesterly direction, debouch- 
ing into Lake Michigan 3^ miles below the village of Saugatuck. Its 
current is slow, averaging about 3 miles an hour, and its slope uni- 
form, there being no waterfalls and no considerable rapids except at 
two points, at each of which there occurs a descent of 3 or 4 feet within 
a distance of a few rods. The river flows through a rich agricultural 
region, in a valley from one-fourth of a mile to 2 or 3 miles in width, 
backed by low hills or sloping gently to the upland. The flat lands 
in the valley are often flooded and serve largely as permanent mead- 
ows through which the river winds, often in a very tortuous manner. 
Two branches unite at Albion to form the main stream. The total 
length from the point of juncture to the outlet is 101 miles. 

In respect to the climate, topography, and run-off of its watershed 
Kalamazoo River may be considered as typical of the larger streams 
of southern Michigan, including the Grand, the St. Joseph, and the 
Raisin, all of which find their sources within a few miles of each 
other and of the Kalamazoo. The drainage area covers 1,750 square 
miles overlaid with Pleistocene deposits. The surface formations are 
distributed about as follows : Morainal ridge and glacial drift covers 
between 25 and 45 per cent of the watershed ; clay-loam till plains, 25 



lane.] RUN-OFF AND WATER POWER OF KALAMAZOO RIVER. 



23 



to 35 per cent; overwash valley train deposits of the ice drainage, 35 
to 45 per cent. The latter lies chiefly in the middle and upper por- 
tions of the watershed, underlying short tributaries with swamp drain- 
age. The clay -loam till plains form basins for lake storage, but give 
small flow from ground storage. The surface soil is diversified. 
Gravel, clay, and loam, mixed with sand, alternate in relatively small 
areas. 1 

Between Albion and Augusta, a distance of 34 miles, the main river 
channel lies between parallel morainal ridges deposited by the east 
wing of a reentrant cusp of the ice front which had at one time 
worked back step by step from the Indiana line. Between Kalamazoo 
and Plainwell the river channel cuts through the more northerly of 
these parallel ridges. The Valparaiso moraine and Covert ridge, run- 
ning parallel to the above and to the lake front, are similarly crossed 
below Otsego. 

The main river below Kalamazoo largely follows lines of pre-Glacial 
drainage. In the upper portion of the watershed the tributaries, 
which are numerous and ramify extensively, generally disregard the 
morainal contours in their courses, while the main stream follows them 
closely. There is a fall of from 12 to 20 feet, within a distance of 
about a mile, at the point of discharge of a number of tributaries, 
furnishing excellent water powers at points where the extent of the 
flats prevents dams being built on the main river. 

The depths in feet, as determined from deep borings of the drift 
sand and shale deposits underlying the river channel at various 
points along its course, are as follows : 2 

Sections below channel of Kalamazoo River. 



Place. 



Distance 

from 
mouth of 
stream. 



Depth of 
glacial 
drift. 



Depth of 
sand rock. 



Depth of 
blue shales 
below sand 

rock, a 



Albion 

Marengo 

Marshall 

Battle Creek 
Kalamazoo . 
Allegan 



Miles. 

101 
93 

88.8 
75.5 
52.1 
32.5 



Feet. 
10 
60 
70 

7<? 
130 
260 



Feet. 

271 

200 

43 

43 

(b) 



Feet. 
100 
200 
327 
320 
(b) 
770 



a As far as measured. 



b Together, 1,070 feet. 



The line of the supposed outcrop of the bottom of the Marshall sand- 
stone crosses the watershed in a northwesterly and southeasterly direc- 
tion, intersecting the river channel below Battle Creek. 



1 See effect of drift upon topography and drainage, by Frank Leverett: Seventeenth Ann. 
Rept. U. S. Geol. Survey, Part II, pp. 706-711. 

2 The geology of Lower Michigan with reference to deep borings: Geol. Survey Michigan, 
VoL V, Part II. 



24 WATER RESOURCES OF LOWER PENINSULA OF MICHIGAN, [no. 30. 



There are, within the catchment basin, a large number of small lakes 
and spring hollows, in which water stands part or all of the time. 
Many of these have no surface outlets and feed the stream only 
through seepage or ground flow, a large portion of their waters being 
consumed directly by evaporation. Each of these lakes drains an 
area varying generally from six to twelve times its own area, and 
their combined catchment reduces materially the area directly tribu- 
tary to the river. The following table shows the relative number and 
area of tributary and nontributary lakes within the watershed in the 
four counties having the largest tributary drainage: 1 

Tributary and nontributary lakes in the watershed of Kalamazoo River. 



County. 


Drainage 
of river. 


Number 
of tribu- 
tary lakes 
over jfe 
mile in 
diameter. 


Area of 

tributary 

lakes. 


Number 
of nontrib- 
utary lakes 
within 
drainage 
area. 


Area of 
nontribu- 
tary lakes. 


Calhoun 


Sq. miles. 

486. 63 
148.5 
273.5 
637. 


58 
21 
39 
65 


Sq. miles. 
3.69 
1.29 
5.29 
6.59 


47 
38 
31 
25 


Sq. miles. 

2.95 

0.32 

2.25 

.64 


Jackson 

Kalamazoo 

Allegan 



It will be seen that most of the lakes are tributary. About 1| per 
cent of the drainage area is lake surface. Probably 5 or 6 per cent 
drains into nontributary lakes. 

The surface of the watershed is rolling. Prairie, swamp, and hilly 
stretches alternate at short intervals. Many lakes and a consider- 
able area of swamp lands have been made to yield their waters 
directly to the stream through drainage. 2 To what extent the diminu- 
tion of lake and swamp storage and of forested areas for the pur- 
poses of agriculture has been detrimental to the flow of the stream 
and to its value for water power can only be inferred. The oldest 
mill owners and water-power users strongly maintain that the river 
yields less power than formerly, holding that the flow is less uniform 
and the volume appreciably smaller than in pioneer days. 

1 These data have been obtained chiefly from atlases of the various counties. 

2 The problem of swamp drainage has been carefully studied. Peppermint and celery are 
largely grown on drained areas. See Michigan Engineer's Annual; Drainage engineering, by 
B. C. Carpenter: Proc. Michigan Engineering Society, 1882, pp. 40-48; Drainage of large marshes, 
by C. E. Hamilton: Proc. Mich. Eng. Soc, 1884, pp. 15-19; Reclamation of swamp lands, by 
O. H. Todd: Proc. Mich. Eng. Soc, 1894, pp. 57-66. 



lane] RUN-OFF AND WATER POWER OF KALAMAZOO RIVER. 25 

The distribution of cultivated, forest, meadow, and swamp areas 
in the watershed is as follows : 1 

Character of watershed of Kalamazoo River. 

Per cent. 

Improved tilled land, including meadow and grass in rotation 60 

Permanent meadows, pastures, orchards, etc. 7 

Woodland and forest . . . 11 

Undetermined, including waste swamp, lakes, building plats, villages, etc.. 22 

Total 100 

The character of the vegetation is an important factor in determin- 
ing the proportion of rainfall on a watershed which reaches the stream 
as run-off during the summer months. The distribution of the prin- 
cipal crops grown and the number of inches of water they will 
require on the entire watershed during the growing season, are shown 
in the following table : 

Distribution of crops in the watershed of Kalamazoo River. 



Crop. 


Entire 
watershed 
covered in 

1896. a 


Water re- 
quired dur- 
ing growing 
season, b 


Water re- 
quired on 
the entire 
watershed. 


Wheat 


Percent. 

11.2 
8.0 
4.0 
3.3 
0.7 
1.7 
6.9 

10.0 


Inches. 

10.8 

13.3 

16.6 

9.1 

4.6 

4.6 

20.5 

cl5.0 


Inches. 
1.2 
1.1 
0.7 
0.3 
0.03 
0.08 
1.4 
1.5 


Corn ... _ ... 


Oats 


Rye 


Potatoes . . . 


Beans ... 


Hay 


Gardens, barley, millet, mint, etc. . . 



a From Farm Statistics of Michigan, 1896, issued by the secretary of state, Lansing, Michigan, 
1896, may be taken as an ordinary year. 

6 After Risler's data. See Report of State Engineer and Surveyor of New York for 1894, 
pp. 373-377. 

c Average. 

The length of the growing season has been taken as one hundred 
days, including the months of June, July, and August, and part of 
September. The average date of the first heavy or killing frost varies 
in different localites of the watershed. The limiting dates will usually 
be between September 25 and October 10. The inches of water 
required on the entire watershed has been obtained by multiplying 
the depth required by each crop by the percentage of the whole area 
covered. Comparing these with the former data the following amounts 
are obtained as the water requirements of vegetation during the grow- 
ing season of an ordinary year. 



Deduced from acreage data given in census of Michigan, 1894, Vol. II, Table I. 



26 WATER RESOURCES OF LOWER PENINSULA OP MICHIGAN, [no. 30. 

Inches. 

Leading crops on tilled area 6.6 

Permanent meadows, etc 1.1 

Woodland and forest, 11 per cent at 4 inches 0.4 

Add for areas nototherwise included _ _ 3.0 

Total depth required by vegetation .11.1 

RAINFALL AND METEOROLOGY. 

In order to obtain the true mean rainfall of the watershed it would 
be necessary to have long contemporaneous records at stations uni- 
formly distributed throughout the region. Rainfall records have 
been maintained within the Kalamazoo watershed at the stations, and 
for periods shown in the following table. Column 5 gives the average 
yearly rainfall at the station multiplied by the percentage of the 
entire watershed, which it may be fairly said to represent. In this 
way the mean annual rainfall of the entire watershed is found to be 
33.87 inches. Toward the mouth of the stream the depth of the 
annual rainfall increases several inches. 



Rainfall on watershed of Kalamazoo River, (a) 



1 

Station (proceeding down- 
stream). 


2 
Years. 


3 

Mean 
annual 
rain and 
melted 
snow. 


4 
Propor- 
tion of 
water- 
shed rep- 
resented 
by each 
station. 


5 

Rainfall 
on entire 
water- 
shed for 

each 
station. 


6 

Probable 
annual 
fluctua- 
tion. 6 


Hanover 

Pulaski _ . _ 


1886-1896 

1888-1891 

1888-1892 

1888-1892, 1896. 

1881-1892. 

1889-1896 

1876-1880,1885, 
1895,1896. 

1876-1896. 

1890-1896. 


Inches. 
32.89 
28.54 
29.39 
33.16 
35.70 
30.28 
29.18 

36.45 
35.75 


Per cent. 
3.33 
4.16 
5.56 

12.22 
6.39 
3.75 

11.22 

20. 40 
32.97 


Inches. 
1.10 
1.19 
1.63 
4.00 
2.28 
1.14 
3.35 

7.42 
11.76 


Inches. 

zt4.2 
3.8 
2.8 
4.5 
2.0 
4.3 
4.4 

4.0 
4.2 


Concord _ _ _ 


Olivet 

Marshall 

North Marshall 

Battle Creek 


Kalamazoo 


Allegan 





a The meteorological data used in this report have been supplied by Mr. C. P. Schneider, direc- 
tor Michigan weather service. 
b Deduced from the records in accordance with the theory of probabilities by Peters's formula. 

Inasmuch as the rainfall at a station for any year can not be less 
than the mean by an amount exceeding 100 per cent, but may be 
more than 200 per cent of the mean, one would expect to find slightly 
more dry years than wet years in a long rainfall record. Out of eighty 
yearly records used in the table, thirty-nine were above the station 
means and forty-one were below. The twenty-one year record at 
Kalamazoo showed twelve years below and nine years above the 



LANE.] 



RAINFALL AND METEOROLOGY KALAMAZOO REGION. 



27 



mean The fluctuation from the mean for dry years, or, in other 
words, the severity of the drought, will be less than the average 
fluctuation from the mean for wet years, in proportion as the number 
of dry years is greater than the number of wet years. The variability 
or probable fluctuations of rainfall, in inches, for any single year 
above or below the mean is shown in column 6. 

The best record of rainfall within the watershed is that at Kalama- 
zoo, covering twenty-one years, from 1876 to 1896, inclusive. The dis- 
tribution of the monthly rainfall and the temperature throughout the 
year at Kalamazoo are shown by the following table. The heaviest 
rainfall occurs in the months of May and June, but that in August 
is most variable. This is probably due to the pre valence of thunder- 
storms during that month, which is also a month of high mean 
temperature. January has the lowest mean temperature, the least 
precipitation, and the least variability. 

Monthly rainfall and temperature at Kalamazoo. 



Month. 



January 

February. 

March ... 

April 

May 

June 

July 

August 

September 

October 

November 

December 

For the year 



Mean 

monthly 

rainfall and 

melted 



Inches. 
2.24 
2.40 
2.42 
2.63 
4.47 
4.58 
3.15 
2.79 
3.36 
2.76 
2.97 
2.70 



36.47 



Propor- 
tion of the 
mean 
yearly- 
rainfall. 



Per cent. 
6.2 
6.6 
6.7 
7.2 
12.3 
12.6 
8.6 
7.6 
9.2 
7.5 
8.2 
7.3 



Probable 
fluctuation 
above or 
below the 
mean for a 
single year. 



Inches. 
0.63 
0.92 
1.01 
1.21 
1.02 
1.35 
1.15 
1.46 
1.31 
0.90 
0.88 
1.12 



4.03 



4 
Mean 
monthly 
tempera- 
ture at 
Kala- 
mazoo, a 



O Jjl 

23.08 
25. 45 
32.15 
46.95 
58.58 
68.35 
72.17 
69.64 
61.73 
50.34 
37.03 
28.19 



47.9 



a 1876 to 1895. 



The data in the above table accord well with the observed character 
of the stream, which is usually about as follows: A spring freshet in 
March or April is followed by medium water until June. High water 
often occurs for a few days after heavy rains in June, and sometimes 
also in August. Low water in later July, August, and September is 
accompanied by a depletion of stored ground water. Gradual increase 
in the flow occurs until the ground becomes frozen. Winter flow is 



28 WATER RESOURCES OF LOWER PENINSULA OF MICHIGAN, [no. 30. 



uniform and moderate, unless the stream is swelled by sudden melt- 
ing of snowfalls. This frequently occurs in January or February, 
and is followed by moderate high water until the spring thaws. 

In so far as the meteorological records at the different stations 
within the watershed are contemporaneous, they show a tendency for 
like variations from the mean rainfall and temperature at all stations 
during the same year. The region may therefore be considered fairly 
isoelimatic, since changes affecting any large portion of the watershed 
will in general similarly affect the whole region. 



Fig. 1. 



10 














































q n 














































8 n 














































7,0 




















, 


— 
























6.0 




















s 




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5,0 




/.-' 












f 


^ 


























s, 


40 






\ 




/ 


S, 






























ZI 




3,0 






\ 




/ 












i 




\ 
















zr 




2.0 








N 






v 




/ 




\ 




\ 
















pt 




1,0 








\ 




/ 


\ 








\ 




> 
















7^ 




.0 








\ 




/ 


\ 




/ 




\ 




UNE 


>/*«£, 


l/v An/ 




*RECI 


'ITATIO 


V AND 


LAKl 


t-kv, L 


1,0 













' 


\ 


/ 






\ 






V 














I_ 




9,0 














\ 


/ 






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V / 












t 




3.0 














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/ 






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v 






y 


S 




t 




4,0 














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60 
































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o 


3 C 


a i 

o t 


I 5 

O 


3 t 


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3 r. 


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3 o 


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1 C 




3 tP io eo r- 
j o> os o> <r. 

3 00 OO 130 oo 



00 1 

33> 



-Fluctuations in the level of Lake Michigan and the annual precipitation at Kalamazoo, 
Michigan. (Prepared by R. E. Horton.) 

The yearly rainfall record at Kalamazoo is shown by the solid line 
in the accompanying diagram (fig. 1). It will be seen that the yearly 
fluctuations from the mean annual rainfall are periodic in their occur- 
rence. The ordinary cycle consists of a primary minimum followed 
by a period of increase for one to three years, and terminates in a 
primary maximum followed by a period of decrease for four or five 
years. This latter has a secondary superimposed cycle with its mini- 
mum and maximum usually one year apart. The times of recurrence 
of the different phases of the cycles thus far observed are shown in 
the following table : 

Periodic rainfall at Kalamazoo. 



Phase. 


l 


2 


3 


4 


Primary mini mum . .. 




1882 
1885 
1886 
1887 
6 


1888 
1890 
1892 
1893 
7 


1895 
1896 


Primary* maximum 


1877 

1879 

1888 

6 or 7 


Secondary minimum 

Secondary maximum 

Whole period, years 









A fifth minimum may be expected about 1901. 

Rainfall records at other stations within the watershed do not cover 
a sufficient number of years to determine whether there is a similar 



lane.] RELATION OF LAKE LEVEL TO RAINFALL. 29 

periodicity in the rainfall throughout the watershed, nor are there 
gaging data at hand to show whether a corresponding periodic deca- 
dence takes place in the stream flow. If such should prove to be the 
case, the fact should be of commercial value to farmers and water- 
power users. The existence of a short rainfall cycle following such a 
regular periodic law is worthy of remark. Periodic fluctuations in 
rainfall having cycles of greater length than the above have been 
observed at various places in this country and abroad. At Sacra- 
mento, California, a forty-year rainfall record exists showing a six or 
seven year cycle as at Kalamazoo. 1 Many long records show no regu- 
larly recurring cycles, but in all cases which the writer has observed 
two or more successive dry or wet years occur with much greater fre- 
quency than would be the case if the sequence of wet or dry years 
were purely a matter of mathematical calculation. As a safe conclu- 
sion it may be said that certain meteorological conditions underlying 
rainfall tend to recur in more or less obscure cycles. It seems not 
improbable that the causes of such cycles are general in their appli- 
cation ; and their apparent effects in many instances are masked by 
local or secondary conditions. The final solution of the problem will 
have an important bearing on questions relating to the water resources 
of any region. 

RELATION OF LAKE LEVEL TO RAINFALL. 

Observations of the height of the water surface of Lake Michigan 
have been made since 1800. In the absence of longer rainfall records 
within the watershed any relation that may be found to exist between 
the rainfall and the lake levels will be helpful in studying the run- 
off. The different kinds of fluctuations to which the water level of 
the lake surface is subject may be classified in relation to the causes 
producing them , as follows : 

(1) Small tides, which at Chicago the United States Lake Survey 
found to have an amplitude of 1-J- inches for neap tide to 3 inches for 
spring tide. 

(2) "Seiches," so called, similar to those observed on Swiss lakes, 
and not thus far satisfactorily explained. They consist of small waves 
or pulsations having an interval of about ten minutes from impulse 
to impulse and apparently recurring without cessation. 

(3) Temporary fluctuations, due to the wind. Colonel Whittlesey 
states that on August 18, 1848, a gale from the northeast reduced 
the water level at Buffalo 15-J- feet lower than on October 18, 1894, 
the time of a terrible gale from the southwest. 

(4) Annual variations, caused chiefly by differences of temperature 
and evaporation and by the melting of snow and ice. On Lake 
Michigan low water usually occurs in November and March. The 
highest water occurs in June and July. 

1 See climate, soil, characteristics and irrigation methods in California, by Charles W. Irish: 
Yearbook U. S. Dept. Agric, 1895. 



30 WATER RESOURCES OF LOWER PENINSULA OF MICHIGAN, [no. 30. 

(5) Secular variations, covering periods of several years, dependent 
on rainfall and meteorological conditions. The length of the periods 
is irregular and the times of recurrence of maximum and minimum 
phases can not be predicted closely. Knowing the mean annual levels 
for a series of years we may expect a similar series in the future, but 
with the times of the different phases very different. The number of 
maxima and minima within a given interval of years will, however, 
be nearty uniform for long series. 1 

On the accompanying diagram (fig. 1) the height, in feet, of the 
water surface of Lake Michigan, above or below the mean level (viz, 
581 feet above tide) is shown, by a broken line, for a period of twenty- 
one years, 1876 to 1896, inclusive. It will be noticed that the lake 
levels are subject to a much greater relative fluctuation than is the 
rainfall. The two curves follow each other somewhat closely, although 
the periods are longer and more continuous for the lake levels. The 
year 1896 is exceptional in that it shows the lowest lake level recorded, 
while it was the year having the highest recorded rainfall at all stations 
within the watershed except Kalamazoo, where it was third in rank for 
twenty-one years. There is reason to believe that the level of Lake 
Michigan and the rainfall and the run-off of the watershed are covari- 
ants. Exceptional years can be ascribed to high summer temperature, 
producing luxuriant vegetation and excessive evaporation, so that lit- 
tle rainfall appears as run-off, or else the distribution of the rainfall 
through the year may be unfavorable to its reaching the streams and 
lake as run-off. The former was apparently the case in 1896. Care- 
ful inquiry from power users showed that within the Kalamazoo 
watershed there was a much greater shortage of water in the river in 
1896 than in 1897, a year of considerably lower rainfall and mean 
temperature during the summer months. The mean rainfall at six 
stations in the watershed in 1896 was 41.9 inches, or 8 inches above 
the average. 

RUN-OFF, RAINFALL, AND WATER POWER. 

In studying stream flow it should be borne in mind that the amount 
of rainfall appearing as run-off in a given year is the resultant of a 
large number of more or less independent influences. Conditions 
may so combine that those factors which would ordinarily be in the 
background will in some instances become the controlling elements. 
Few, if any, rules without exceptions can be laid down, and each 
stream must be studied separately in all its relations. 

1 The following references have been consulted in relation to lake levels: 

(a) Chart of Fluctuations in the Level of the Great Lakes, by Charles Crosman, Milwaukee, 
Wisconsin. 

(b) Climate of the Lake region, by Bela Hubbard: Pop. Sci. Monthly, January, 1888. 

(c) Water-supply of western division of Erie Canal, by George W. Rafter: Report State 
Engineer and Surveyor of New York, 1896. 

(d) Report United States Deep Waterways Commission: Washington, 1896. 

(e) Reports of Chief of Engineers, U. S. Army. 



LANE.] 



31 



The following table shows the discharge of the Kalamazoo water- 
shed corresponding to different percentages of the mean annual rain- 
fall appearing as run-off in the stream : 

Relation between run-off and discharge of Kalamazoo River. 



Proportion of mean 
annual rainfall ap- 
pearing as run-off. 


Depth of run-off on 
entire watershed. 


Mean discharge of 
the stream. 


Per cent. 


7ncA.es. 


Second-feet. 


110 


37.26 


4,803.2 


100 


33.87 


4, 366. 5 


90 


30.48 


3,929.8 


80 


27.09 


3,493.1 


70 


23.7 


3,056.5 


60 


20.31 


2, 619. 9 


50 


16.92 


2,183.3 


40 


12.53 


1,646.7 



The discharge of the Kalamazoo River was measured at a number 
of points along the stream during the spring high water of March, 1898. 

Discharge of the Kalamazoo River at the Marengo dam, March 23, 1898, 

Flow over dam and wasteweir _ _ _ . . _second-feet_ _ 456. 8 

Diverted for power purposes . . do 113. 

Total discharge do 569.8 

Drainage area above dam ... square miles. _ 261. 

Discharge per square mile _ second- feet . _ 2. 18 

The depth of water flowing over the crest of the dam on March 23 
was 15 inches. The height for maximum flow, which occurred on 
March 22 and lasted only a few hours, was 24 inches. This would 
have corresponded to a total discharge of about 930 cubic feet per 
second, or 3.5 cubic feet per second per square mile of drainage. We 
may compare this flow with that of Boardman River at Traverse 
City, a stream having a drainage area of 295 square miles. The river 
was measured on April 10, 1897, by Mr. George W. Rafter, and was 
at that time carrying about 300 cubic feet per second, or slightly over 
1 cubic foot per second per square mile. Mr. Rafter shows that the 
flow of Boardman River undoubtedly may be as low as 100 cubic feet 
per second for two successive months, and that it may not yield more 
than 75 cubic feet per second, or about one-fourth of a cubic foot per 
second per square mile, for a period of a few days. 1 

1 Water Supply of Traverse City, Michigan, by George W. Rafter and F. H. Northrup, city 
engineer, 1897. 



32 WATER RESOURCES OF LOWER PENINSULA OF MICHIGAN, [no. 30. 

Discharge of Rice Creek at Marshall, Michigan, March 23, 1898, 1 mile above point 
of confluence with Kalamazoo River. 

Discharge over dam _. second-feet. _ 25. 

Diverted for water power _. do 125. 

Tributary drainage ...square miles __ 99. 

Discharge per square mile second-feet. . 1.5 

Discharge of Battle Creek at Battle Creek, Michigan, March 24, 1898. 

Discharge over dam second-feet. _ 253. 3 

Diverted for water power _ _ do 75. 4 

Total discharge do 328. 7 

Tributary drainage square miles. _ 180. 

Discharge per square mile second-feet. . 1.8 

The discharge a day or two previous was somewhat greater, although 
at that time there was an extensive flood on the flats between the point 
of measurement and the confluence of Battle Creek with Kalamazoo 
River. 

Discharge of Kalamazoo River at Battle Creek dam March 24, 1898. 

Discharge over dam second-feet. . 648. 6 

Diverted for water power . _ _ _ do 459. 3 

Total discharge do 1,107.9 

Tributary drainage area _ square miles. . 510. 1 

Discharge per square mile. second-feet. _ 2. 17 

Combining the two preceding measurements we get 1,436.6 cubic 
feet per second for the discharge of Battle Creek and Kalamazoo River 
at Battle Creek. , This, with a total tributary drainage area of 690.1 
square miles, gives 2.08 cubic feet per second as the discharge per 
square mile of drainage area. 

Discharge of Kalamazoo River at Otsego, March 26, 1898. 

Discharge over dam second-feet. . 234. 8 

Diverted for water power do 1,669.1 

Total discharge ...do... 1,903.9 

Tributary drainage area . square miles.. 1,600.0 

Discharge per square mile second-feet. . 1.2 

For purposes of comparison a measurement of Grand River was 
made at the North Lansing dam. 

Discharge of Grand River at North Lansing dam April 9, 1898. l 

Discharge over dam second- feet.. 642. 

Diverted for water-power purposes do 560. 

Total discharge do 1,202. 

Approximate tributary drainage area square miles . _ 1, 168. 

Discharge per square mile second-feet. . 1 . 02 

This was at a time of medium water when the depth of water on the 
crest of the dam was but 14-J- inches. At the time of maximum high 

1 Probably too small, owing to impossibility of getting precise data regarding capacity of all 
water wheels in use. 



LANE.] 



DISCHARGE OF KALAMAZOO WATERSHED. 



33 



water in later March the depth of water on the crest or" the dam was 
shown by the water marks to have been 29 inches. This would cor- 
respond to a total discharge of about 2,365 cubic feet per second, or 
2.0 cubic feet per second per square mile of drainage area. 

The preceding measurements, made at different points along the 
stream at nearly the same time, show about the flow that may be 
expected in Kalamazoo River at ordinary high water. The flow per 
square mile apparently gradually decreases as the tributary area 
increases. The low flow of Battle Creek may be due to a large pro- 
portionate area of lake storage, gathering the flood waters to be yielded 
as run-off at a later period. 

The high-water flow exhibited by the gagings was preceded by heavy 
rainfalls and high temperature, as shown at several stations, within 
the watershed, in the accompanying table: 

Meteorological conditions at stations on Kalamazoo River, March, 1898. 



Station. 


Precipitation. 


Temperature. 


March 
10 to 13. 


March 
18 to 21. 


March 

24 to 28. 


Total 

for 
month. 

Inches. 
6.16 
3.57 
3.83 
4.21 
2.32 
3.21 


Great- 
est 
rain- 
fall in 

24 
hours. 

Inches. 
2.02 
1. 

1.44 

1.50 

.51 

.80 


Day of 
heavi- 
est 
rain- 
fall. 

10 
28 
20 
18 
26 
19 


Maxi- 
mum 
daily. 

°F. 
67 
70 
69 
69 
69 
69 


Mini- 
mum 
daily. 


Mean 
daily. 


Olivet 

Hanover ... 

North Marshall _ . . 

Battle Creek 

Kalamazoo 

Hastings 


Inches. 
3.38 
1.07 
.91 
1.35 
1.01 
1.27 


Inches. 
1.61 

.55 
1.94 
1.50 

.47 
1.12 


Inches. 

0.48 
1.10 

.78 

.51 
.52 


°F. 
10 
1 
1 
10 
8 
1 


°F. 

38.8 

38.2 

36.5 

38.9 

39. 

37.2 



No snow fell during the month. On March 1 the ground was cov- 
ered with about 9 inches of packed snow. This melted rapidly, and, 
as the ground was frozen, appeared almost entirely as run-off during 
the month. 

IRR 30 3 



34 WATER RESOURCES OF LOWER PENINSULA OF MICHIGAN, [no. 30 
Depth of snow on ground at stations on Kalamazoo River, March, 1898. (a) 



Station. 


Mar.l. 


Mav.2. 


Mar. 3. 


Mar. 4. 


Mar. 5. 


Somerset .... 


Inches. 

9.0 
11.0 

5.0 
12.0 

8.0 


Inches. 

8.0 
10.0 

5.0 
12.0 

8.0 


Inches. 
7.0 
8.0 
4.0 
12.0 
7.0 


Inches. 
6.0 
7.0 
3.0 
10.0 
6.0 


Inches. 

5.0 
6.0 
3.0 
10.0 
5.0 


Olivet. . 


Battle Creek 


Kalamazoo 

Hastings . . 


Average depth J _ . _ 

Average daily melting. . 


9.0 


8.6 
6.4 


7.6 
1.0 


6.4 
1.2 


5.6 

0.8 


Station. 


Mar. 6. 


Mar. 7. 


Mar. 8. 


Mar. 9. 


Mar. 10. 


Somerset 


Inches. 
4.0 
5.0 
0.5 

8.0 
4.0 


Inches. 
3.0 
4.0 
0.0 
0.5 
2.5 


Inches. 
1.0 
3.0 


Inches. 


Inches. 


Olivet 


1.0 


0.0 


Battle Creek 

Kalamazoo _ . 


None 
1.0 






Hastings . . 


Trace 




Average depth 


4.3 
1.3 


2.0 
2.3 


0.8 
1.2 






Average daily melting.. 











a At sunset of each day. 

There are no precise data at hand relative to the low- water flow of 
the river. By careful inquiry from power users it was found that in 
nearly all cases a shortage of water occurs for from two to six weeks 
in the months of July, August, and September. At such times the 
flow is insufficient to supply the water wheels now in use to their f ul i 
capacity, and is less than the amount of water shown as being diverted 
for power purposes at the time the measurements were made. This 
would be expected from the rainfall records. The following table 
shows the lowest recorded yearly rainfall at stations in the watershed. 
As the minimum observed rainfall at a station decreases as the length 
of the record is extended, years may be expected to occur in which 
the rainfall will not exceed that at Kalamazoo in 1894, or 71.5 per 
cent of the mean, as shown in the table. This would be 25.43 inches 
for the entire watershed, using our previously derived mean of 33.87 
inches. For the years 1888 and 1889 the total rainfall at Kalamazoo 
was but 56.53 inches. The rainfall for August frequently falls below 
0.1 inch, and in 1889 the combined rainfall for July, August, and 
September was but 3.89 inches. If the flow from full ground water 
were 2 inches a month it would undoubtedly have been depleted 
in such a drought so as not to exceed three-fourths of an inch in 
a month. As little or no rainfall reached the stream directly, the 



LANK.] 



EXTENT AND DURATION OF HIGH WATER. 



35 



run-off in the summer of 1889 must have fallen as low at least as 0.7 
cubic foot per second per square mile. 

Years of least recorded rainfall at stations on Kalamazoo River. 



Station. 



Pulaski 

Concord 

Allegan 

Battle Creek . . . 
North Marshall 

Hanover 

Marshall 

Kalamazoo 



Num- 
ber of 
years' 
record. 


! 

Year of 

least j 
rainfall. 1 


4 


1889 


5 


1888 


7 


1895 


8 


1879 


8 


1894 


9 


1888 


11 


1889 


21 


1894 



Per cent 
of mean 
Rainfall , annual 
in lowest | rainfall 
years. i at sta- 
tion. 



Inches. 
24.20 
24.17 
26. 95 
20.20 
22.73 
25.30 
28.1 
26.07 



85.0 
81.8 
75.3 
74.8 
75.0 
76.9 
78.7 
71.5 



HIGH WATER AT KALAMAZOO. 

The extent and duration of high water at Kalamazoo is shown by 
the following data relative to the height of the river surface during 
floods at that place. At the township line, 2 miles below the city of 
Kalamazoo, the elevation of the bottom of the river bed is the same 
as at the Gull street bridge within the city, there being practically no 
fall in the river in that distance. As a result, the current is extremely 
sluggish, and a portion of the city is subject to frequent floods. The 
muck-covered river flats within the city are extensively devoted to 
the cultivation of celery. The annual spring flood is productive of 
little damage, but when floods occur during the summer months they 
result in a heavy loss to the celery growers and also tend to produce 
a bad sanitary condition, lasting for some time. 

The following table gives the elevation of the river surface in feet 
above the city datum plane. The elevation of the water surface at 
its mean stage is 67 feet. The measurements at East avenue bridge 
are at the point of confluence of Portage Creek with Kalamazoo River. 
Those at Gull street bridge are below that point. 



36 WATER RESOURCES OF LOWER PENINSULA OF MICHIGAN, [no. 30. 
Observations of high water at Kalamazoo, (a) 



Year. 



1883.... 



1887. 
1888. 
1896. 



1897 



1898. 



Date. 



June 28, 5 p. m 

June 29, 7.30 a. m . . 

June 29, 1 p. m 

June 29, 6 p. m 

June 30, 7 a. m 

June 30, 1 p. m 

June 30, 6.30 p. m .. 

July 1, 9 a. m 

July 1, 6 p. m 

July 2, 7 a. m 

July 2, 1 p. m 

July 2, 6 p. m 

July 3, 7 a. m 

July 18 

August 17 

February 

July 

July 16 

July 19 . 

July 31 

August 1 

August 3 

August 5 ._ 

August 8 

August 19 ... 

March 12, 1.20 p. m. 
March 12, 6 p. m . . . 
March 13, 7 a. m 
March 13, 1.20 p.m. 
March 13, 6 p. m . . . 
March 14, 4 p. m 
March 15, 7 a. m 

March 14 

March 15 



Elevation. 



Feet. 
71.66 
72.25 
72.42 
72.50 
72.74 
72.90 
73.03 
73.36 
73.59 
73.71 
73.71 
73.63 
73.40 
67.88 
68.55 
b 74. 77 
67.55 
69.10 
68.74 
70.69 
70.99 
70.49 
69.20 
68.99 
69.50 
71.34 
71.48 
71.84 
72.01 
72.34 
72.04 
71.54 
71.35 
71.80 



Place of measurement. 



At East avenue bridge. 



Do. 

At Gull street bridge. 



At East avenue bridge. 



At East avenue bridge 
during spring flood. 



a These data were obtained from records furnished by Myron C. Taft, city engineer of Kala- 
mazoo. Data for 1883 are not strictly comparable with those since that year, as an old dam has 
been removed and a shorter channel cut, allowing flood waters to pass off more quickly. 

b Highest water recorded. 



LANE.] 



WATER POWER OF KALAMAZOO RIVER 



37 



WATER POWER. 

The fall and slope of the river is shown by the accompanying table. 
In comparison with this the next table (on page 38) shows the number 
of feet of fall used for water power at dams on the main river. Out 
of a total fall of 338 feet from Albion to Saugatuck, 76 feet is now 
used for the production of power. The aggregate rated power of the 
water wheels in use on the main river is between 4,000 and 5,000 horse- 
power. This includes 18 flouring and 5 paper mills, besides planing 
mills, machine shops, municipal waterworks, etc. There are also 20 
dams on tributaries with a developed water power, so far as it could 
be ascertained, of 1,500 horsepower. 

Fall and slope of Kalamazoo River. l 



Portion of river. 


Distance along 
river. 


Total fall. 


Mean slope per 
mile. 


Albion to Marshall 


Miles. 
12.25 

13.25 

23.37 

19.73 

32.50 

101.10 


Feet. 

52 

70 

43 

57 

116 

338 


Feet. 
4.22 

5.26 

1.84 
3.00 
3.55 
3.34 


Marshall to Battle Creek 

Battle Creek to Kalamazoo _ . . 

Kalamazoo to Allegan 

Allegan to Saugatuck 

Albion to Saugatuck 





As has been shown, the capacity of water wheels now in use is fully 
as great as the flow of the stream will warrant without the construc- 
tion of new dams. Viewed from an economic standpoint the water 
power of the stream can not be greatly increased over the present 
development unless some method of flow regulation and conservation 
of the flood waters be put in operation. 

1 The fall has been deduced from railroad profiles. See topography and climate of Lower 
Michigan, Report Michigan State Board of Health, 1878. 



38 WATER RESOURCES OF LOWER PENINSULA OF MICHIGAN 

Water power developed on Kalamazoo River. 



Location of dam. 


Head 
or 
fall. 


Net horse- 
power de- 
veloped. 




Feet. 




North Branch at Horton _ 


10 


55 


North Branch at Concord 


9 


118 


North Branch at Bath Mills 


8 


33 


South Branch at Mosherville . _ '. 


14 


80 


South Branch at Homer 


8 


214 


South Branch at North Homer .. _■ 


7 


69 


Main River at Albion 


13 

7 


298 
118 


Main River at Marengo 


Main River at Marshall 

Main River at Ceresco 


6 

8 
12 




289 
469 


Main River at Battle Creek 


Main River at Plainwell 


19 


786 


Main River at Otsego 


12 


1,725 


Main River at Allegan 


8 







WATER POWER OP HURON RIVER. 1 

Huron River rises in the town of Clarkston, Oakland County, Mich- 
igan, and runs southwest into Livingston County, draining many lakes 
in Oakland County. The chief of these are White, Union, Upper 
Straits, Lower Straits, Pine, and Spring lakes, averaging one-half to 
1 square mile in area. In the southeast part of Livingston County 
it takes the waters of four lakes, viz, First Base Lake, Second Base 
Lake, Strawberry Lake, and Portage Lake, varying from 1 to 2 square 
miles in area. Portage Lake is the largest and also the lowest down 
the valley. It is 3 or 4 miles long and averages about half a mile 
in width. It is fed by Portage River, which itself drains ten lakes of 
small size. From there the Huron flows northeast, then southeast 
again, and enters Lake Erie just below the mouth of Detroit River. 
The total drainage area is 950 square miles. 

The country is flat or rolling, with a glacial drift of clay, sand, and 
gravel, well adapted to the raising of wheat, which is the staple and 
which gives work to many flouring mills. The river was declared 
navigable by Congress. Once a flatboat for freighting ran from 
Ypsilanti 30 miles to the mouth, but its use was discontinued on the 
advent of railroads. There was too little water for navigation, and 
the dams interfered. Boats run up to Rockwood, 4 or 5 miles up, on 
the line of the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railroad. 

No lumbering is done, and the stream is devoted to manufacturing, 

i From the report by James L. Q-reenleaf , special agent of the Tenth Census of the United 
States, Vol. XVI, p. 493 et seq. 



r.ANE.] WATER POWER OF HURON RIVER. 39 

for which it is peculiarly suited. It has a fall averaging 5 feet a mile, 
and this near its mouth. It is on the line of several railroads, and, 
owing to adjacent lakes, the storage capacity is large and its flow more 
regular than that of various other rivers in the country. The banks 
of the river are usually from 9 to 12 feet high, and hence ponds do not 
spread. The bed and banks are usually hard clay, or a sort of con- 
glomerate of clay, gravel, and stone (till). There is no rock bed 
except at Flat Rock, the first fall above the mouth. 

The course is extremely winding. The Michigan Central Railroad 
runs along the river 17 miles from Ypsilanti to Dexter, and in that 
distance crosses it sixteen times. The bulk of the manufacturing is 
between Dexter and Ypsilanti, on the line of the Michigan Central 
Railroad. 

At Ypsilanti the average breadth is 100 feet, the average depth 1-^ 
feet, and the maximum depth about 5 feet. The ordinary low- water 
flow, calculated from the estimated horsepower, is 220 cubic feet per 
second, or 0.23 cubic foot per second per square mile of drainage area. 
The available power under 10 feet head at ordinary low water is from 
225 to 250 horsepower. There is no difficulty from floating ice. A 
mill using the full average power of the stream can run at full capac- 
ity ten months of the year, and during August and September at half 
capacity. The river has no large tributaries below the lakes, and 
hence the power for a given fall is nearly the same in the upper and 
in the lower part. 

DEVELOPED POWER. 

Most of the mills are between Dexter and Ypsilanti, a distance of 17 
miles. Above Dexter and below Portage Lake are the Hudson and the 
Dover mills. Below Ypsilanti are mills at Rawsonville, Belleville, etc. 

Three forms of dam are in use: (1) The pile dam, a common form. 
A typical specimen is one belonging to the Ypsilanti Paper Company. 
Piles were driven 6 feet between centers, both across and down the 
stream, covering a strip 50 feet wide across the channel. The ends 
were then cut, so that taken together their surface formed two planes, 
meeting at the center line of the dam, like a roof. The space between 
the piles was filled in with stone and the top planked over. A plank 
apron was built on the lower side. (2) The crib- work dam — ordinary 
timber cribs, filled with stone and planked over. (3) The frame dam, 
used at the Dover mills. A triangular frame was built and planked 
over and stone thrown under; a plank apron was built on the lower 
side, and gravel thrown in on the upper side. So far as ascertained, 
there have been no instances of the breaking away of dams. 

At Flat Rock, 7 or 8 miles above the mouth of the river, is the first 
power. There is about 100 horsepower available. 

At New Boston and at Belleville powers are being developed. 
There are two flouring mills at Belleville. The banks are high and 
well adapted to ponding. 



40 WATER RESOURCES OF LOWER PENINSULA OF MICHIGAN, [no. 30. 

At Rawsonville is a flouring mill with 7 feet head. There is 150 to 
175 horsepower available. 

Ypsilanti is the chief manufacturing center on the river. There 
are three paper mills, two flouring mills, a woolen mill, and a small 
custom sawmill, also a low dam in connection with the city water- 
works. The hanks are from 9 to 12 feet high, and ponds do not 
spread. There are three dams, about one-half to three-fourths of a 
mile apart, and no fall is wasted. The bed is hard clay. The Michi- 
gan Central Railroad runs up the valley from this point, and freight 
facilities are good. 

The lower pond has 7 feet available fall and 175 available horse- 
power. There is a pile dam 190 feet long. The average breadth of 
the pond is about 150 feet and the length half a mile. The power is 
utilized by the Ypsilanti Paper Company's mill. The middle pond has 
5 feet available head and 125 available horsepower. The only mill at 
the power is the Huron flouring mill, which uses on the average 75 
horsepower. There is a pile dam 5 to 6 feet high and 100 feet long. 
The pond is from 150 to 200 feet broad and half a mile long. The 
upper pond is owned by the City flouring mill and the woolen mill, 
and feeds them and also a small sawmill fed from the race of the 
flouring mill. The fall at the dam is 8 feet and the available power 
is 225 horsepower. The dam is from 120 to 130 feet long, the area of 
the pond 35 acres, and the depth 5 or 6 feet; the dam does not spread 
much. The woolen mill uses 42 horsepower. The flouring mill, 
situated on a race, has 1 foot additional fall, making the total fall 9 
feet; it uses 100 horsepower. The sawmill, when running, uses about 
10 horsepower. 

The mills of the Peninsula Paper Company are situated at a pond 
a short distance above Ypsilanti, and have 300 available horsepower. 

The largest power on the river is at Lowell, and it is used by the 
Ypsilanti Paper Company. The available head is 16 feet, and 400 
horsepower is available. The pile dam has been described ; its length 
is 166 feet. The area of the pond is 30 or 35 acres. 

At Ann Arbor, 7 or 8 miles above Ypsilanti, there is a level with a 
head of 10 feet and 250 available horsepower. The dam is a pile dam 
200 feet long, which is utilized by the Ypsilanti Paper Company's 
mill. Above it is another level with the same head and power. A 
woolen mill, a flouring mill, and a sawmill are fed from this pond, 
using altogether 100 horsepower. The dam is 140 feet long. 

At Foster's station, 3 miles from Ann Arbor, there is a fall of 9 feet, 
all of which is utilized by a paper mill taking 100 horsepower and a 
woolen mill taking 58 horsepower. The power is estimated at 300 
horsepower for six months of the year. 

At Delhi there are two flouring mills, a woolen mill, and a sawmill, 
all using water from the same level. There is 7 feet head and 140 
available horsepower. Usualty all the mills can run at once. The 



lane.] WATER POWER OF RAISIN RIVER. 41 

dam is of crib work, 150 feet long. The Scio flouring mills are above 
Delhi, and have 8 feet fall, with 140 available horsepower. The dam 
is of crib work, 100 feet long. 

Dexter has a flouring mill, a woolen mill, and a sawmill, all run 
from the same level. The available head is 5 feet. The dam is of 
crib work, 75 feet long. 

Above Dexter are the Hudson mills, with 5 feet head and 75 horse- 
power — a crib-work dam 100 feet long, — and the Dover mills, with 7 
feet head and 100 horsepower — a frame dam 100 feet long. The 
ponds above Ann Arbor average from 120 to 180 feet wide and one- 
half mile to 2 miles long. There are no important powers above. 

UNDEVELOPED POWER. 

There are a few undeveloped powers. Three miles below Ypsilanti 
is one of 300 horsepower, which has not been used, because the pond 
would spread over valuable farming lands and because the location is 
not near the railroad. One mile below Ann Arbor is a power with 4 
or 5 feet fall, unimproved, giving from 100 to 125 horsepower. It is 
on the line of the railroad. The small power, compared with the cost 
of improvement and lack of demand for it, is the apparent reason it 
has not been improved. One and one-half miles above Ann Arbor is 
a fall of 10 feet, unimproved. Nearly 300 horsepower is wasted. It 
was used formerly by a sawmill, now burned down. It is on the line 
of railroad and awaits improvement. 

WATER POWER OF RAISIN RIVER. 

The North Branch rises in Jackson County, and the South Branch 
in the northwestern corner of Ohio. They unite east of the center of 
Lenawee County and flow into Lake Erie. The drainage area is 1,162 
square miles. Near the mouth it is 200 or 300 feet wide, but in ordi- 
nary water it is only from 6 to 12 inches deep, with a sluggish cur- 
rent. At Adrian it is a small stream, 25 or 30 feet wide, with a 
moderate current, about 1 foot deep. There are several small mills 
on the river, but no power of importance. 

USES WHERE QUALITY IS IMPORTANT. 
USE FOR DRINKING. 
INORGANIC IMPURITIES. 

The uses of water where the quantity required is not excessive and 
is usually readily obtained, but where the proper quality is important 
and is not so easily maintained, will now be considered. Impurities 
are of two kinds, organic and inorganic. Under the first head are 
classed sewage, swamp contaminations, ammonia, and bacteria. Salt, 
though inorganic, has often been considered an indication of the pres- 
ence of organic contamination. But in the district under consideration 
it is not true, and a knowledge of the normal chlorine percentage of the 



42 WATER RESOURCES OF LOWER PENINSULA OF MICHIGAN, [no. 30. 

same class of water in the same neighborhood is a prerequisite to the 
application of the chlorine test as indicative of sewage. Investiga- 
tion of this normal percentage has been undertaken for the State 
board of health by Prof. D. Fall. Salt is one of the commonest inor- 
ganic constituents, only less common than the acid carbonates of lime 
and magnesia, which are always present except in some sandstone 
wells and in cistern waters. Iron in some shape, and sulphates of 
lime, etc., are also not uncommon in wells. 

The quantity of mineral matter in the lakes or rivers is not suffi- 
cient to affect the water appreciably as a supply for healthy people, 
while for cases of uric acid diathesis, where lime should be avoided, 
many sandstone wells and shallow surface wells in sand seem spe- 
cially suited, since their water contains less than the usual amount of 
lime. Occasionally the water from deeper wells is softer. Filtered 
rain water is used and is not at all unpalatable when one is accustomed 
to it. Distilled water is also manufactured and sold. 

More detailed conclusions as to the connection between the chemi- 
cal character and the suitability of a water for drinking will be found 
in a subsequent paper. 

Dr. W. H. Deadman, veterinary surgeon at Alpena, asserts that 80 
per cent of all the horse disease in northern Michigan is due to hard 
water. The hardness of water varies in the lakes and rivers, and 
probably varies with the season of the year and with the depth at 
which the samples are taken. 

Some of the shallower rock wells, almost all those over 500 feet, 
and a few of the wells in drift are so highly charged with mineral 
matter (over \ oz. per cubic foot) as to be cathartic or otherwise un- 
pleasant and unfit for domestic use. It is important to note, however, 
that in many cases the mineral matter comes from beds of salt or gyp- 
sum, or from even less continuously porous beds, and that therefore 
fresh water may at times be obtained by proper casing, even under 
beds of salt. There are a number of cases on record in which fresh 
water has been obtained under salt. A notable case is that of Mr. 
Leipprandt, near Caseville (sec. 13, T. 17 1ST., R. 10 E.), who has a 
well 100 feet deep that is very salt, and another well 280 feet deep 
(cased to 228 feet) which yields good fresh water. 

ORGANIC IMPURITIES. 

Organic impurities are most prevalent when inorganic are least so, 
in the shallow wells, rivers, and ponds, and even in cisterns and 
standpipes. Yet even deep artesian wells are not by any means free 
from organic matter — for example, the Bad Axe supply. Such matter 
is, however, probably harmless. Organic impurities may be divided 
into two kinds — mere vegetable growths of algae, etc. , and the more 
dangerous bacteria of typhoid. The former are not wholesome, though 
not so dangerous as the latter, and may form in cisterns and stand- 
pipes in very pure water, as, for example, at Bad Axe and at Leaton, 



lane] USES OF WATER WHERE QUALITY IS IMPORTANT. 43 

arid are especially abundant in artesian water. The exclusion of 
light tends to check their growth in cisterns. A few cases are 
reported where malaria was cured by a change to drinking artesian 
water, seeming to show that bad water, and not bad air, was the 
cause of the disease. But it is of course possible that it was not the 
previous presence of vegetable matter in the water that caused 
the disease, but rather the curative properties of some mineral ingre- 
dient in the artesian water that effected the cure. Wooden or plank 
casing, which is much too common, soon gives a foul taste to water, 
and any dug well with a basin is liable to have foreign matter get 
into it that does not improve its quality — angleworms, frogs, mice, 
moles, rats, and snakes, which well drillers find on cleaning the wells. 

Wells dug or driven in sand only, without a clay capping, are liable 
to surface and sewage contamination, though of course when they are 
put down 100 or 200 feet the danger is greatly reduced by the sand 
filtration. Even then it would be well to have the point and strainer 
considerably below the top of the water line. It would save trouble 
in an exceptionally dry year, and would give additional protection. 

The practice of having any dug or shallow surface water well in a 
barnyard or near a privy is uncivilized and is only the temporary 
expedient of uneducated immigrants who have recently arrived, and 
one is glad to see that among the intelligent and more prosperous 
farmers deep driven or drilled wells are becoming the rule and not 
the exception. Too commonly, however, the well water of the deep 
driven well is allowed to flow into the old dug basin, a practice which 
has many objections (considered on page 73). The casing should 
extend from the pump to the water-bearing stratum. The well should 
be removed from the barnyard, to which the water may be conducted 
by a long launder. If a surface or dug well is the best that is avail- 
able, it should be oat in the orchard, and removed from sources of 
contamination. 

Digging is sometimes the best way of sinking through a bowldery 
formation. A good practice, prevalent in Emmet County, is to cement 
the wall as the well is sunk, using a 3-foot boiler tube as a shield. 
Mr. E. R. Phillips, of Bay City, uses such a cemented well in the 
city, but he has a depth of sand and charcoal at the bottom which 
acts as a huge filter — an excellent palliative expedient. 

Rivers and lakes are the great sources of supply for village and city 
waterworks, being but rarely used by individual farmers, except as 
some dry season forces them to haul water. Unfortunately, as we 
have already remarked, too often an ample supply has been consid- 
ered the prime requisite for city plants. 

DAIRY USE. 

One great advantage of flowing wells is in keeping milk cool. 
The temperature of such wells approaches the mean annual temper- 
ature of the place at which they are, plus a certain small amount, 



44 WATER RESOURCES OF LOWER PENINSULA OF MICHIGAN, [no. 30. 

dependent on the depth below the surface from which they draw their 
water, about 1 degree for 60 feet. The annual fluctuations of temper- 
ature hardly affect them, though in fact if from 30 to 60 feet deep they 
are colder in summer than in winter. This is not onty to be expected 
theoretically, but has been verified in practice. Professor Davis found, 
in studying some of the Alma flowing wells, that the water of one about 
55 feet deep stood at 52° F. in winter and at 48° F. in summer. 

Since the mean annual temperature of Michigan, as is shown in fig. 4, 
varies between 39° F. and 49° F., the temperature of flowing wells or 
springs should have about the same range, and the recorded observa- 
tions of the shallow flowing wells are but 4° or 5° higher. This is 
precisely the range of temperature best adapted to keep milk. Such 
flowing wells may be obtained all over the Saginaw Valley, and, as the 
map (PL VII) shows, such wells, drawing water either from the rock 
or from gravel beds under clay, occur throughout the State. These 
wells yield a water very favorable to the growth of algse, and the 
vegetable matter must be frequently cleaned from the tanks. Dark- 
ness checks its growth. 

For use in refrigeration or for general dairy use the same purity is 
not requisite as in drinking water. While of course water brought 
in contact with butter should be free from dangerous organic impuri- 
ties, inorganic mineral constituents, like salt and sulphates, are 
reported to be some advantage and help in hardening the butter. 
Much of the water of the Saginaw Valley, which is rather too salt for 
domestic use, is excellent for dairy purposes. 

COOKING, LAUNDRY, BOILERS. 

Next to the use for drinking naturally comes cooking, laundry, and 
boiler use. As organic impurities are rendered harmless when boiled, 
this factor is eliminated, except when, as is occasionally the case, 
"foaming" is produced in the boiler. The deposit of mineral matter 
in the teakettle is usually either carbonate or sulphate of lime, mag- 
nesia, or iron. If the former, a little acid quickly removes it. Iron is 
betrayed by its color. Only occasionally is water found with so much 
mineral matter as to be unfit for cooking. In such cases iron is usu- 
ally the offending element, turning tea black and discoloring potatoes. 
Water, if allowed to stand, will precipitate most of the iron. It forms 
a scum which is at times mistaken for oil. 

Impurities of another class, i. e., hydrogen sulphide and other gases, 
as well as traces of oil, occur more or less in various parts of the 
State. Hydrogen sulphide occurs in various places, and is charac- 
teristically common just beneath the Devonian black shales. A mod- 
erate amount does not seem to be injurious, and users soon get used 
to its peculiar odor; but in the deeper salt wells in the southeastern 
part of the State it is disagreeable, in some cases seriously affecting 
the eyes. 

Another important consideration in regard to water is its effect on 



lane.] USES OF WATER WHERE QUALITY IS IMPORTANT. 45 

boilers. The impurities which deposit scale are the sulphates and 
carbonates of lime and magnesia, and many railroads have spent con- 
siderable money to obtain purer boiler water. Water with 8 to 10 
grains of carbonate of lime to the gallon is considered hard, and when 
there are over 40 grains to the gallon — and there are large districts 
where this amount is present — the water has been condemned by rail- 
road authorities. Mount Pleasant water is typical as a bad water for 
use in boilers. 

The sulphate of lime is worse than the carbonate. The carbonates 
of lime, magnesia, and iron are somewhat precipitated by exposure to 
the air, and further by boiling or by the addition of quicklime. In 
every district it will be found that the water of certain wells is consid- 
ered good for threshing machines, both in quantity and in quality. 

In the steam plant of the University of Michigan, which furnishes 
steam heat and also drives a couple of engines, the condensed water 
is returned to the boilers. In addition, the engineer informs me that 
a supply of about 400 gallons plus about 10 per cent is used daily. 
This is nearly all derived from cisterns, representing about eleven 
months' supply. I obtained, through the kindness of Professor Cooley, 
a blue print showing the exact roofage used in supplying the cisterns. 
From this I estimate that 19,493 square feet of catchment area fur- 
nishes 17,600+ cubic feet of water. This is not far from 1 cubic foot 
per square foot of catchment surface, or 38 per cent of the Ann Arbor 
rainfall (32 inches). It is impossible to estimate the amount of leak- 
age, as there are five cisterns, scattered at considerable intervals over 
the grounds, and part of the rainfall of exceptionally wet seasons may 
overflow the cisterns. It seems as though a larger percentage of the 
rainfall might be saved, although the percentage of run-off to rainfall 
is apparently higher than in the Kalamazoo Basin. Much of the win- 
ter snow will of course slide off, and in each rain a certain percentage 
must be allowed for wetting the roof and for evaporation. It will be 
safe, however, to estimate that 10 feet square of roof surface will yield 
100 cubic feet, or about 25 barrels, of water per annum. 

At the Agricultural College the custom is to heat the water to boil- 
ing and then allow it to aerate, cool, and settle. At the Midland 
Chemical Works they propose to remove the hardness first with lime 
and then with soda ash. 

In any case it is well to get the water as pure as possible before 
introducing it into the boiler; and heating the feed water with the 
exhaust steam and allowing it to settle will certainly help. The 
growth of the soda-ash industrj^ in Michigan will doubtless permit 
the economical use of that chemical. 

Cistern or rain water and condensed boiler water are of course free 
from these impurities, and it might be well to plan an agricultural 
engine for use in the Saginaw Valley with a condenser arranged to use 
its water over again and again. The soda salts, common salt, and 
sulphate of soda are not objectionable, but rather help to clean out 



46 WATER RESOURCES OF LOWER PENINSULA OF MICHIGAN, [no. 30. 

scale, and in the Saginaw Valley are often present in the water. The 
chlorides of lime and magnesia and the heavily carbonated waters are 
corrosive. 

Generally speaking, the softest waters are either rainfall waters 
from sands so near the surface that the lime has been leached out, or 
waters from wells in the Napoleon and certain other sandstones, 
which, even when salt, run much lower in sulphates than do the 
waters of the higher beds. 

"What has been said concerning cooking and boiler feed water applies 
also to that for laundry use. The prevailing hardness of the water has 
led to the extended use of cistern water for washing. If one-third the 
rainfall can be saved, a roof 10 feet square will yield about 600 gallons 
a year. It is onty in part of the sandstone district that the wells are 
so soft that there is no object in saving rain water. To supplement rain 
water very shallow wells are sometimes used, when only 2 or 3 feet of 
sand is underlain by clay and has been washed free from lime, so that 
one can get practically surface rain water. In a fresh cut in a gravel 
bank (e. g., at Mecosta), the leaching out of the lime and iron from the 
first 2 feet or so is well marked by a dark line at the bottom where 
the lime and iron are concentrated, which have often cemented the 
pebbles together into one form of "hardpan," a term also applied to 
till. 

The same remedies for hardness mentioned above, viz, exposure to 
air, boiling, and the addition of quicklime or sal soda, are also avail- 
able in laundry use, and are known as "breaking" the water. 

It is advisable to get the water as pure as possible before its injec- 
tion into the boiler, rather than to rely entirely on ' * dosing " the 
boiler. 

SUGAR-BEET INDUSTRY. 

In the manufacture of beet sugar it is important to have a water 
as free as possible from salts, for every molecule of chlorine salt is 
said to invert about five molecules of sugar into glucose. Organic 
matter is said to work in like fashion. None of the surface waters, 
and but few of the deeper drift wells, are really disqualified, although 
there is considerable difference between them. Most of the deeper 
rock wells, however, over 300 feet in the rock, except those in the 
northern part of the State and, relatively speaking, the waters of the 
coal basin, would be unsuited for such use. A great deal depends on 
prompt handling and skill. 

PHOTOGRAPHY AND OTHER USES. 

For photography, paper making, wool scouring, and manufacturing 
industries generally it is important to have as little mineral matter 
as possible. For photography rain water can be used only if fairly 
free from organic matter. Photographers frequently use the common 
hard water. One possible exception to the general rule that sulphates 







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a 



1 



lane.] QUALITY AND QUANTITY COMPARED. 47 

are deleterious in manufactures is ale, in which, it has been said, 1 
a certain amount of calcium sulphate is an improvement. Gener- 
ally speaking, however, the breweries take great pains to get as 
pure water as possible. In compounding medicines also a pure water 
is of importance. The industries (salt, potash, bromine, and min- 
eral water) dependent on minerals in the water are not here treated. 
The industries requiring pure water are well worth consideration in 
reenforcing the demand for pure water and in estimating the availa- 
bility of several possible supplies. Of course pure water is important 
to those seeking the most favorable location for such industries. 

QUALITY AND QUANTITY COMPARED. 

It may be said in general that while for uses which look first to 
quantity the lakes and rivers are the natural source, for freedom from 
organic impurity the deeper wells have the preference. Water from 
both these sources, except from some sandstone and coal measure 
wells, is rather hard, so that for washing cistern water is preferred. 
The deeper the well the greater the inorganic impurity, with some 
noticeable exceptions, chiefly in that the waters from the Napoleon 
sandstone and the Dundee limestone, down to the Sylvania sandstone, 
may be less charged than the waters from beds above. 

The Great Lakes, with properly located and guarded intake pipes, 
furnish a good city water supply. The supply from all rivers, even 
the Detroit and St. Clair, should be filtered. Many towns fortunately 
possess an ample supply from deep wells. Only in that territory which 
lies at the same time in the region of the old lake bottoms, colored blue 
on the map (PI. II), and that of the Coldwater shales (see PI. VI) is the 
outlook for deep-well supply entirely unpromising, so that carefully 
filtered river water or aqueducts from springs near the flank of the 
nearest moraine seem the most hopeful sources of large supply for 
towns. 

Statistics show that city use is generally extravagant, rarely less 
than 100 and rising to 200 and 300 gallons per capita a day. This 
is much more than domestic use requires, and is due partly to uses 
where quality is comparatively no object, such as street sprinkling 
and fire protection, the use of lawn hose and of water for elevators 
and light machinery, etc., but largely to sheer waste. It is not for 
the public welfare to stint the use of water to the detriment of clean- 
liness, but it is advisable to stop waste, and the effect of meters in 
this respect is wonderful. It would be well to have a minimum price 
for a certain quantity, say 30 gallons a day for each room served, to 
prevent undue economy, and after that charge in proportion to the 
amount of water used. It is a question, also, whether the more 
wealthy residents who use the lawn sprinklers freely pay more or less 
than their fair share of the water rates at the present schedules. 

1 See Ency. Brit., article Burtou. 



48 WATER RESOURCES OF LOWER PENINSULA OF MICHIGAN, [no. 30. 

Some few towns, like Rochester, possess an ample supply of unex- 
ceptionable water, though even in such cases a prudent provision for 
the interests of posterity would guard against the waste which has 
already lowered the head in some communities to a dangerous extent. 
A flowing well is valuable, and the head needful to produce one should 
not be recklessly wasted. 

Most of the smaller towns, however, stand on a border line. They 
can get a supply of well water which will suffice for ordinary and 
economical use but not for emergencies. This is a field for reservoirs 
and for filters. It should be remembered that the efficacy of a filter 
depends very largely on its not being used constantly, but allowed, 
as it were, to rest from time to time. Filtration of a lower grade sup- 
ply is especially adapted for extraordinary demands. The ordinary 
supply of such towns as Alma and Mount Pleasant should be from 
deep wells, but in case of fire filtered river water might be turned in. 
To use unfiltered river water without notice to consumers ought to be 
out of the question. Accustomed as people may be to the better supply 
they will not use the same precautions as if they had the poor supply 
regularly. In the Manual of American Waterworks it appears that 
there are many towns which, in case of fire, pump directly from the river. 

Lower Michigan is so situated with respect to the Great Lakes that 
most of the larger towns can derive from them a satisfactory supply by 
using proper precautions. Many others can derive a domestic supply 
from the Marshall sandstone. Only along the Saginaw River is the 
question of water supply at all serious. Saginaw Bay is exceedingly 
shoal, and for East and West Saginaw and Bay City the supply can 
not be regarded as at all satisfactory. 

It seems, however, that there is destined to be a city of the first 
rank along Saginaw River. Even if from the sandstones (not merely 
the drift which has been tested unsuccessfully by the waterworks 
experimental wells) a sufficient supply of water relatively free from 
mineral can not be obtained, 1 it seems certain that to the west and 
southwest, in Tuscola County, less than 25 miles away, the water 
resources can be utilized for a metropolitan water supply. 

CLIMATE. 

The most detailed account of the climate of the State is by the 
former State geologist, A. Winchell. 2 

1 The recent explorations for coal and city wells show that here and there in channels there 
are within the first 200 feet-beneath Saginaw areas of water-bearing sandstones. 

2 Tackabury's Atlas of the State of Michigan, edited by H. F. Walling. First edition, 1873; 
second edition, 1884. 

Proc. Am. Assoc. Adv. Sci. (Troy meeting), August, 1870. 

Harper's Magazine, Vol. XLIII, July, 1871, p. 275. 

Wegweiser der Michigan, Hamburg. 

Oesterreich. G-es. fur Meteorologie, Wien. Zeitsch., Bd. VIII, February 1, 1873, p. 40. 

From Winchell's work much of the material in this chapter is abstracted. It is, of course, not 
wholly up to date, but Prof. E. A. Strong, of Ypsilanti, director of the State weather service, 
who has studied and compiled the later data, informs me that they are substantially correct, 
and I am indebted to Mr. C. F. Schneider, director of the State weather service, for additional 
figures. 



LANE.] 



CLIMATE. 



49 



The most notable features of the climate of the Lower Peninsula 
may be summed up in a few words by saying that it is what its name 
implies, pene-insular, modified by the fact that it has greater relief 
than the neighboring States to the west. The mean temperature for 
the year is higher on the east shore of Lake Michigan than on the 
west shore, as is also vividly shown by Winchell's isothermals of the 
extreme minima, and in this respect, owing to air drainage, the high- 
lands have an advantage over the lowlands, the central part of Mich- 
igan being better off than St. Louis, so far as the extreme cold of 
winter is concerned. In fact, the mean of January temperature is 
higher and of July heat lower than farther west. 

It is obvious that these facts have a bearing on the run-off of the 
streams. The amount and distribution of the rain or snow must also 
be taken into consideration. This has been carefully studied for the 
Kalamazoo River by Mr. Horton in a previous section, page 26. The 
average precipitation for the Lower Peninsula is some 32 inches. 
The heavy dews which occur in some parts of the State need not be 
taken into consideration as run-off, however important they may 
be for the farmer, because they are largely evaporated or absorbed 
by plants and do not become a part of the water resources. Some 
idea of this factor might be obtained from the relative humidity of 
the air, but as to actual rainfall the Lower Peninsula is in about the 
condition of Wisconsin. The distribution of this precipitation is 
also of interest. The contrast in the winter between the upper and 
lower parts of Michigan has frequently been observed. The region 
of Lake Superior will be buried in snow 2 or 3 feet deep when 
through the lower part snow is found only in scattered patches. 
Winchell gives the following table : 

Distribution of precipitation in Michigan by seasons. 



Season. 


Upper 
Peninsula. 


Lower 
Peninsula. 


The State. 


Spring ... . . . .. 


Per cent. 

19. 

27. 

28.8 

22. 


Per cent. 
25.8 
28.7 
27.3 
19.1 


Per cent. 
23.8 

28.3 

27.7 
20. 


Summer _ ... _... ._ 


Autumn - . . 


Winter .__' 


Total 


96.8 


100.9 


99.8 



Taking into consideration both the milder climate and the marked 
diminution of precipitation in winter, the table above indicates less 
accumulation of snow during the winter. Thus the spring freshets 
are much less decided than in many other States, while the temporary 
winter snows largely sink into the ground. From this results a steadier 
flow and less erosion and fewer flood plains in the streams than would 
otherwise be the case. The many lakes without outlets would fluctuate 
IRR 30 4 



50 WATER RESOURCES OF LOWER PENINSULA OF MICHIGAN, [no. 30. 

even more violently were this not the case, and doubtless be more 
likely to cut channels for themselves. The abundance of lakes also 
helps to keep more uniform the flow of the streams. The effect of cul- 
tivation, on the other hand, is to make the spring freshet sharper and 
earlier, for the snow disappears first from plowed fields and cleared 
lands. 

For the four figures (figs. 2 to 5) illustrating Michigan climatology 
I am indebted to*the director of the Michigan weather service, Mr. C. F. 



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i0N ,A^CU^^l S M,AwX GfNESCE ]' LAPE f R j 5TCL ' 



— ... — 1 

VAN | 
! BURENjKW-AMAZOOj CAtHOUN J I JACKSON | WAJHTL 



Fig. 2.— Distribution of average minimum temperature in Michigan. 

Schneider. They are compiled from the records of the various stations 
(about 108 in all) , and are the result of averaging all the data on file 
in the office, in general covering a period of about ten years, except 
for the precipitation chart (fig. 5), which covers a much longer period. 
The period of observation is not the same for all stations. The tem- 
perature observations at Lansing go back to 1873. 

Fig. 2 shows the average of the average diurnal minimum temper- 
ature for each year. 



CLIMATE. 



51 



The mollifying effect of the westerly winds blowing off Lake 
Michigan and Saginaw Bay is very apparent. The highlands north- 
west of Saginaw Bay have extremely low minima, as might be 
expected, while those southeast, on the contrary, have not so low 
minima as the Saginaw Valley, and it appears that the valleys drain- 
ing thither have, on the whole, lower minima than those draining 
southeast. 

£ake superior 



i 



r 



JL 1 



LUCE ! 



I ALC^T—i 
-. ^^_L— ' ISCHOOLClTAFTl 

-1 i*-- 



- J i 



* 

£ 






-.CHARlEVOu' f E 



EMMETl 



/ IEEIANAW \ 



u 



, . MONT T 
| OTSEGO |MORENCYjAt.PENA< 

i i 



I — \- 

ICRA^fOBOj OSCODA J AUCONA 



<!5TEr|V/EXFO«tolMIS5AuWdROSCO(WOH|OGEMAW[ LrfSCO 
MASON|/LAKE jOSCEOL\i CLARE jGLADWl* 



TV 1 1 T | BAY 

^ j \ MECOSTA ISABELLA. MIDLAND: 



J5C0LA I SANILA 



Oai r MOflfcALM I GRATIOT \ SAGINAW/ 

j — I .jJX^ 

irrlwJ ^NT fT«. jfeiTEZjOWSB J LAPEER fsT 



^NTON JSH^AS i GENESEE ! LAPEER 5TP W 
1 SEE ; ,, ^ | 



L_.x. T J._l p _L f X_ r 

S6 "k-AIUGAN j BARSy^TEATDN j INGHAM JLMNGbTONJ 0A A AN 




Fig. 3.— Distribution of average maximum temperature in Michigan. 



Fig. 3 similarly gives the average of the average maximum tem- 
perature during each year. At the northern end of Lake Michigan 
the maximum as well as the minimum temperature is raised, and the 
general average is abnormally high (fig. 4). At the lower end, how- 
ever, the maximum and the mean temperatures are but little raised, so 
that the lake serves only to mollify the frosts of this fruit belt, chang- 
ing the climate, as a whole, only as it becomes more equable. The two 
highlands have opposite relations to the maxima; the one northwest 
of Saginaw Bay has specially low maxima, while the one southeast 



52 WATER RESOURCES OF LOWER PENINSULA OF MICHIGAN, [no. 30. 

is distinctly higher. The former is sandy and largely covered with 
barren, denuded jack-pine plains; the latter is lower, more clayey, 
more cultivated, and probably retains its moisture — the great regu- 
lator of climate — better. 

Fig. 4, showing the mean temperature, indicates that warmth enters 
from the southwest corner of the Lower Peninsula and extends 
up Grand River Valley, while the temperature at Saginaw is rather 




J._l_..lSr>LJ | I 

49° : i. 

Fig. 4.— Distribution of average mean temperature in Michigan. 

colder than it is immediately east or west. The mollifying effects of 
Lake Erie and Lake St. Clair are also shown in figs. 3 and 4. It is 
generally supposed that, as stated below, the temperatures of flowing 
wells are those of the localities given in fig. 4, plus a certain amount, 
this amount depending on the depth of the well — about 1 degree in 
60 feet, but observations give rather higher temperatures in wells less 
than 200 feet deep. The summer rains may penetrate farther and 
more rapidly than do the winter snows. 

Fig. 5 shows the average rainfall. In the southern part of the 



LANF.l 



CLIMATE. 



53 



peninsula precipitation and temperature seem to increase together, 
while in the northern part of the peninsula a line of low precipi- 
tation seems to extend from Saginaw Bay to Grand Traverse Bay. 
It is a fortunate coincidence that the flat, low, clayej r , easily flooded 
Saginaw Valley has a relatively low record in precipitation as well as 
in temperature, while the sandier western shore has more rain. 

The wind has some influence on problems of water supply. Many 
wells are said to change their level with the wind. This is probably 




3S" 30" 

Fig. 5.— Distribution of average annual precipitation in Michigan 

in many cases not directly due to the wind but to fluctuations in baro- 
metric pressure. The prevailing winds have another very important 
effect. Where the prevailing wind is on shore, the shore is more apt 
to be sandy than where the wind is offshore. A large part of the penin- 
sula has been covered by lakes and the sandy character of the shores 
and old shore lines that face the west, which is the direction of the 
prevailing wind, is pronounced. It should be remarked, in addition, 
that during the hot days of summer a marked afternoon breeze from 
the lake is a prevailing feature. 



54 WATER RESOURCES OF LOWER PENINSULA OF MICHIGAN, [no. 30. 



LONG-PERIOD VARIATIONS IN RAINFALL. 

There is one important feature of the climate, however, on which no 
light can be gained from Winchell — the variations of the annual rain- 
fall from year to year. This may be learned from the fluctuation of the 
ground- water level, or the level of the Great Lakes, which observation 
has shown (see fig. 1) rise and fall according as the general rainfall of 
the previous years has been more or less than the average. When 
the rainfall for several years has been below the average there is also 
a fall in the level of underground water and in the level of the lakes, 
especially those that have no outlets. Clam Lake, near Cadillac, has 
varied 16 feet within memory, and Houghton Lake and Higgins Lake 
are lower than they have been. One will everywhere find reports 
that the lakes, streams, and wells are lower than they were formerly, 
and muck plains (PL III, B) underlain by shells, marking former 
lake bottoms may be seen. This lowering of lakes and ground water 
is ascribed to various causes, all of which may perhaps be at work. 

In the first place, it is argued that cultivation tends to accelerate 
the run-off so that water does not have time to soak into the earth. 
This is doubtless true. On preliminary railroad profiles, for instance, 
areas are marked "swamp" or even "all water" which are now fertile 
fields by no means damp. The original Government field notes of the 
United States Land Office also show areas marked "swamp " which are 
far from such to-day. Much discussion and many charges of fraud 
concerning these "State swamp lands" have arisen, but not all such 
descriptions were by any means fraudulent. Many of these swamps 
are explicitly described as beaver meadows or as due to beaver dams. 
The beavers have gone, their dams have been broken, and the swamp 
has become dryer. Again, loggers' operations are active in clearing 
out the streams and in cutting out the dams, though they erect dams 
and obstructions of their own. On the whole, however, the floods, 
aided by the loggers, have cleared the streams and made them more 
efficient drainage channels. The more irregular the flow of a given 
quantity of water the greater its efficiency as an erosive agent. 

The next cause to be considered is devastation by fire. Logging 
operations leave the forest a forest still, but the black scourge of fire 
which follows strips the ground of leaves, and, worst of all, fre- 
quently consumes the vegetable mold that absorbs water like a 
sponge. The amount of water actually evaporated by a fire is insig- 
nificant in proportion to the permanent damage. Most of this fire 
waste is accidental, but some of it is the result of gross carelessness. 
I have seen a meadow with the mold of generations burned clean in 
clearing, leaving only a bare subsoil of sand fertilized with ashes that 
will yield good crops for a few seasons only and then be leached out. 
Then comes the plow. Sandy soils still absorb water, some of them 
having 36 per cent water capacity, but some of the bare, plowed, 



U. S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY 



WATER-SUPPLY PAPER NO. 30 PL. Ill 




A. CLINTON BORING APPARATUS. 




r<. 







'mMKm 







B. F 



ELD OF ONIONS IN DRAINED LAKE BOTTOM: 1,350 BUSHELS TO 
MUCK PRACTICALLY BOTTOMLESS. 



lahb<] VARIATIONS IN RAINFALL AND WATER LEVEL. 55 

sun-baked slopes of the clay hills are almost impervious to water. 
Finally, in the extreme lowlands drains of every size and variety, from 
the farmer's tile drains to the roadside, the township, and the large 
county drains, accelerate the departure of undesired water. 

The time may come when drainage, instead of being down the slopes, 
will be along them, transferring the water from the hollows to the 
lower uplands and thus promoting irrigation. But that time has not 
yet come. 

In the second place, there is often supposed to be a general desicca- 
tion of the climate, a steady decrease in precipitation. Of this there 
is no definite historic evidence, though of course in the ice age and 
immediately subsequent there was certainly more water in all lakes 
and rivers, though possibly no greater precipitation. Frozen water 
once covered the county. Legends of what the Indians used to do in 
the way of canoeing can be easily interpreted, partly by the desiccation 
due to settlement (which has already been mentioned) and partly by 
the fluctuations of precipitation and water stage from decade to decade. 
But as research shows, the general water level has been fairly con- 
stant during the century. A period (1886-1896) of decreasing rainfall, 
however, which has just been passed, has lowered the lakes and caused 
the wells to fail in a way that has surprised the oldest inhabitants 
of many of the new towns. It is necessary to go back many years for 
a similar fall. 

SHORT-PERIOD FLUCTUATIONS IN WATER LEVEL. 

Sudden fluctuations occur in the Great Lakes and in the ground 
water which are not regular annual and seasonal fluctuations like those 
before described, but are more like waves of great breadth, the whole 
water of the lake basin washing from side to side. An instance may 
be recorded in which the surface of a channel connecting a small lake 
with Lake Superior rose and fell about a foot in an interval of twenty 
minutes. Similar fluctuations occur everywhere in the lake and com- 
pletely disguise, except to most careful and systematic observation, 
the minute lunar tides. Sometimes these variations can be distinctly 
traced to the wind. A strong north wind will pile the water up in 
Saginaw Bay, and a strong southwest wind will drive it out. A varia- 
tion of 400 feet in the position of the shore line has thus been caused 
in one night. Another cause of these variations, often cooperant with 
the one just mentioned, is a variation of atmospheric pressure over 
different parts of the lake basin, the water tending to rise when the 
pressure is least. 

Analogous phenomena, probably due to analogous causes, are 
reported from numerous wells, but as yet have not been subjected 
to careful investigation. When the wind is in a certain quarter 
long enough or strong enough, or just before a storm (i. e., at a 
time of low atmospheric pressure), the water is reported to come 



56' WATER RESOURCES OF LOWER PENINSULA OF MICHIGAN, [no. 30. 

more freely, to have greater head, or to be roily. These phenomena 
are naturally most conspicuous in wells which flow with no great 
head, and are analogous apparently to those long noted on Stromboli 
and Vesuvius, which are said to discharge their lurid contents more 
freely before a storm. Sometimes these phenomena are attributed to 
direct connection with the lake. This theory, of course, ought not to 
be rejected in all cases; but similar phenomena occur so far from the 
lake that it is safe to assume that in most cases the well fluctuations 
are due to the same cause as the fluctuations in the lake rather than 
to the fluctuations themselves. An interesting "breathing" dry well 
is noted in sec. 7, T. 35 N., R. 5 E., a phenomenon which has been 
noticed in caves elsewhere in the world. 

WELL TEMPERATURES. 

Special attention is due to the effect of mean annual temperature 
on the temperature of wells and springs. It is true in general that 
the temperature of the water in flowing wells or springs represents 
the mean temperature of the locality, but there are some qualifica- 
tions; something must be allowed for the increase of temperature 
which we find everywhere in going toward the center of the earth. 

If the rate of increase shown by the Alma Sanitarium deep and 
shallow wells gives a true average, we get an increase of temperature 
of about (98°-48° = 50°)-^(2863-157=2706) or 1° in 54 feet, which is 
very nearly the normal rate of increase of the world, which may be 
assumed in preliminary reductions. Other wells at Midland, Sagi- 
naw, Frankfort, etc., would give other rates down to 1° in 100 feet, but 
they are for less depths. Water flowing from a driven well 56 feet 
deep, therefore, might have its temperature raised about 1° above 
the average for the place, provided it had been flowing so long or in 
so strong a stream that the temperature of the ground traversed on 
the way up did not affect it. The effect of the summer's heat and the 
winter's cold is felt in the ground (as Lisbon and Edinburgh obser- 
vations have shown) to a considerable depth, the annual variation 
growing less with increased depth and the time of greatest cold becom- 
ing later, so that if the flow is from 30 to 60 feet down the temperature 
should be actually slightly lower in summer than in winter. Observa- 
tions by Prof. C. A. Davis, of Alma (T. 11 K, R. 3 W.), show this to 
be the case in some of the wells there, the water of a well 55 feet deep 
standing at 52° F. in winter and at 48° F. in summer. Other obser- 
vations of the temperature of wells require modification to allow for 
the above factors. But it is certain that the temperature of water 
from a well 100 feet deep ought not to vary more than 2° F. from the 
mean annual temperature of the place, and probably in summer, when 
observations are usually taken, is very near it, the effect of the last 
winter's cold balancing that of the earth's thermal gradient. 



lane.] GEOLOGY AND TOPOGRAPHY. 57 

The temperature of deep-flowing wells of small bore is somewhat 
affected by the earth's heat, e. g., the deeper Bay Port (T. 17 N., R. 
9 E.) wells; but it would certainly be incorrect to take anything near 
(338 -r- 56 =) 6° from their temperature (of 47° F.) to obtain the mean 
temperature of the place. Again, as the winter temperature is felt 
to a depth at which no effect of a particular cold day or week can 
be detected, so a series of extra cold or extra hot years will modify 
the temperature to a depth where no trace of annual fluctuation can 
be observed. In a similar way any permanent factor, like the pres- 
ence of a boiler house or a cellar furnace, may modify the temper- 
ature of a flowing well to a considerable depth. A good illustration 
tion is afforded in a flowing well at the sawmill in Rose City (fig. 8), 
which is deeper and on ground 25 feet lower than the wells of the 
town; but this is not sufficient to account for nearly 7° greater warmth 
over the hotel well. 

SUPERFICIAL GEOLOGY AND TOPOGRAPHY. 

GENERAL DESCRIPTION. 

The contour map of the State (PI. I) shows two high areas, to the 
southeast and northwest of Saginaw Bay, respectively, which are also 
brought out in fig. 6. Winchell has laid down the following proposi- 
tion (Tackabury's Atlas of Michigan, p. 14) : " The actual topographical 
and hydrographical axes of Michigan and the whole lake region are 
the resultant of two forces — a glacial, acting from the northeast, and 
a stratigraphical, acting along the lines of strike of the rock forma- 
tions." This is what he calls the diagonal system in the physical 
features of the State. While this statement may be true in a broad 
way, it must be seriously modified to express the facts of the case. 
It ignores the shore lines of the old lakes, elsewhere recognized by 
Winchell as an important factor, and it is really as approximately 
true that the various positions in Michigan where the glacial front 
halted, i. e. , the moraines, and more or less at right angles to the direc- 
tion of its motion, are the dominant features, and that next to them 
come the lines of halt of the lakes succeeding. The old stratigraphic 
lines of rock outcrops are very obscure. 

In a broad way, as described by Winchell, the consolidated rocks 
are arranged in concentric circles, surrounding the coal measures 
which occupy the center of the State. (See map, PI. VI. ) During 
Mesozoic and Cenozoic time these were eroded, but two sets of strata 
proved to be sufficiently resistant to become topographic features of 
the first class. The Marshall sandstones (Logan conglomerate), the 
Helderberg in the southern part of the State, and the Traverse lime- 
stones in the northern part of the State, tended to make ridges, as 
may be seen in the cross section (fig. 10). Inasmuch as the softer coal 
basin rocks were thus surrounded by harder strata this harder rim 



58 WATER RESOURCES OF LOWER PENINSULA OF MICHIGAN, [no. 30. 

would be cut across in some way. The evidence seems strongly to 
indicate that the channel draining the central basin went off, not as 
Spencer has suggested, through the Saginaw Valley, but past Manis- 
tee toward the great valley, now occupied by Lake Michigan, which 
was excavated in the softer shales, gypsum, and salt, and marks the 
Salina (Lower Helderberg). The circumvallation was probably some- 
what broken in the region of Saginaw; at any rate, the outer circle 
made by the Helderberg (Traverse, Dundee, and Monroe limestones) 
was passed. Thus the ice flood, advancing from the Laurentian high- 
lands, was deflected by this circular double rampart and passed in two 
great lobes — the Michigan and the Huron-Erie respectively — west and 
east of it. As the ice reached its maximum, however, it broke over 
the outer rampart and passed down the present valley of the Sagi- 
naw. At the greatest extent of the ice Michigan was completely and 
undoubtedly smoothly covered with it. Of inter-Glacial periods, with 
accompanying forest beds and other deposits interstratified with the 
till, the evidence is not very clear in Michigan. This is a point of 
importance, as such inter-Glacial beds might be water-bearers. The 
red clay described by Rominger may be such an inter-Glacial forma- 
tion. Wood, however, is not uncommonly found in boring wells, as at 
Vassar, at Paw Paw, in Huron County, and elsewhere. 

A bed of gravel or bowlders, which is porous compared with the 
overlying till, generally comes just above the bed rock, and the till 
itself is sometimes composed of alternations of gravelly clay and sand 
or quicksand. Such alternations and buried wood might be explained 
by the oscillations in the advance and retreat of the ice front and by 
the shifting of the ice streams from season to season, decade to decade, 
or century to century. It should be remembered, too, that caution 
must be used in interpreting the results of mere borings. For instance, 
a 3-foot seam of sand, reported in a 2-inch boring near Saginaw, when 
a shaft was sunk proved to be merely an irregular, nearly vertical 
seam. 

It can not be said that below the present surface of the drift such 
an oxidized and eroded surface has been detected as would plainly 
imply an inter-Glacial period of considerable duration. Such a sur- 
face, especially near the center of motion, would often be swept away 
and obliterated by the readvance of the ice, and I have seen few 
exposures which indicated it, for erosion has not gone very deep since 
the last disappearance of the ice. The cliffs north of Frankfort, and 
particularly the valley of the Au Sable, would seem most hopeful 
places for the search. I should be puzzled to know how to make sure 
of its existence from a mere well record, unless, perhaps, such a zone 
being reached might be recognized by the yielding of softer water 
than that of the strata above. 

The comparative lack of evidence of inter-Glacial epochs in Michi- 
gan, compared with States farther south, can not, however, be wholly 



lane.i GEOLOGY AND TOPOGRAPHY. 59 

accidental, and the advance of the ice may be likened to the tides 
rising and falling on the shore. The highest tides of spring extend 
farther than the others, and the intervals between such extreme 
tides are at least half a year. Lesser high tides occur twice a month, 
and the common tides ebb and flow every day. So, down the beach, 
areas but rarely reached by the waters and uncovered most of the 
time, adjoin those generally covered by the waters. Thus, along 
the Ohio River — the line of the greatest extension of the ice — its 
presence must have been comparatively brief and its visits few, 
while in Michigan, nearer the source of the ice, the inter-Glacial 
periods may have been partly or wholly absent and certainly must 
have been shorter. When the ice finally retired, a lobed arrangement 
of the ice front — two large lobes on each side of the Marshall cir- 
cumvallation and a smaller one, the Saginaw lobe, passing directly 
over it — were conspicuous and remained the most important features 
in determining the topography of the State. (See map of the Pleis- 
tocene deposits, PI. II.) 

The general theory is that the ice retired first from the higher lands; 
the Saginaw ice lobe, therefore, retired first, and bounding it on each 
side were two deeply reentrant cusps, which may be said to be the 
topographic axes of the State. Naturally, streams issued from such 
cusps, draining away the water from the wasting glacier, so that the 
tj^pical form in which cusps appear is that of a stream valley, much 
wider than the present stream, charged with gravel and bowlders — 
valley trains — and heavily belted with moraines. This concentration 
of till and detritus on the highest parts of the rock floor naturally 
forms the highest parts of the State (see fig. 10). 

The eastern cusp follows fairly closely the dividing line between 
the drainage into Lake Erie, Lake St. Clair, and Lake Huron (direct), 
and the drainage into Saginaw Bay and Lake Michigan. It, and also 
the other cusp, is marked by a belt of country crowded with lakes. 
Of the western cusp, Mr. Leverett thinks that he can determine the 
moraines on the Michigan side from those on the Saginaw or east side, 
by the fact that the latter contain many more pebbles of a bright red 
jasper conglomerate. 1 

Thus, at the extreme southwest of the State, where the cusp first 
entered, Mr. Leverett refers to the Saginaw lobe, because it bears 
many red jasper-conglomerate pebbles, the morainic belt (see PI. II) 
which passes northeast from Niles and goes through Kendall, in the 
northeast corner of Van Buren County. Therefore the first position 
of the cusp would lie between it and the stronger ridge just west, 
which undoubtedly belongs to the Michigan lobe and is known as the 
Valparaiso. In confirmation, Mr. Bate, a surveyor of much experi- 

1 My own observations agree so far as they go, but the fact is singular. The conglomerate 
and jasper in question appear to come from the original Huronian area on Thessalon River in 
Canada, and one would think that they would find their way rather into the Michigan than into 
the Huron-Saginaw lobe. 



60 WATER RESOURCES OF LOWER PENINSULA OF MICHIGAN, [no. 30. 

ence in the region, states that the red jasper-conglomerate is abundant 
in Montmorency County, but scarce or absent in Otsego County, 
except near the eastern line. It is to be noticed that on the map 
(PI. II) these moraine belts have their separate color, and the more 
important areas of sand and gravel deposited by streams draining the 
ice front are also delineated, although many smaller areas of gravel 
and sand and stream channels are, for the sake of clearness, omitted. 
A different color is devoted to those areas over which the ice front 
retreated more rapidly, making less conspicuous ridges. 

Both cusps were evidently guided by the higher land of the Mar- 
shall sandstone outcrop. As the eastern cusp worked northeast the 
upper valleys of the two St. Joseph rivers, the Tiffin (whose drainage 
area has been preyed on by the Raisin), and the upper Huron River 
above Dexter, which probably drained off at one time past Adrian and 
possibly earlier found its way into the Ohio, were successive outlets 
of discharge. Farther northeast the drainage has been largely rear- 
ranged, though the upper parts of the Clinton River, and later the 
northern forks of the Flint River, the Cass River on the Saginaw 
Valley side, and the Black and its branches on the other, served for a 
time. The old summit swamp referred to by Taylor 1 may also be 
mentioned, and in Huron and Tuscola counties a number of channels 
are known which evidently drained the ice front but are too numerous 
to be indicated in a general map. High deposits near the angle are 
found at Metamora, between Deanville and Brown City, and near 
Verona Mills. 

For the other cusp Dowagiac Creek served at first and, with St. 
Joseph River, poured into the Keokuk that vast expanse of gravel 
which is found in its upper reaches in Indiana. Then passing north, 
through a belt full of lakes, down the valley of the Thornapple, it may 
be followed up the valley of Flat River, and past Mecosta into the 
Muskegon Valley. In the Muskegon Valley there is a stream which, 
first by way of Mecosta and Barryton and then by the main stream, 
received the cusp drainage for a considerable time. Thus the cusp 
may be followed into Oscoda County. From this point on the origi- 
nal cusp-drainage lines have again been so disturbed and reversed 
that it is hard to trace them. Probably the high points near Otsego 
Lake were at one angle. An old channel seems to pass near Valen- 
tine Lake. But the ice soon retired and allowed the water to flow 
freely all around the peninsula. 

The lines of retreat of these cusps are bordered with moraine hills, 
composed of the debris left by the ice front where it tarried long or 
readvanced. Moreover, the ranges of moraine hills are crowded 
together and are higher toward the lines of cusp retreat, for, these hills 
being nearly parallel to the direction of ice advance and retreat, a 
general advance or retreat in the ice front made only a slight differ- 

iQeol. Soc. Am., Vol. VIII, 1896, p. 31. 



lane.] GEOLOGY AND TOPOGRAPHY. 61 

ence in their position. Of course such moraine belts are studded with 
small tarns — deep lakes of water caught between the various rows. 
Some of the moraines, especially the higher ones, which do not mark 
readvances so much as the edge of the cusp dump grounds, are exceed- 
ingly sandy, with hardly any clay, and in such cases the lakes fre- 



Fig. 6.— Sketch map of the drainage of Lower Michigan. 

quently have no outlets. Lakes of another variety are formed in the 
following way. The moraine belts are frequently cut through by chan- 
nels which served as vents for streams coming forth from the moraine. 
Only a few of these channels are indicated on PL II. One, well marked, 
is formed by the upper valley of Willow Creek in T. 16 N., R. 13 E., 



62 WATER RESOURCES OF LOWER PENINSULA OF MICHIGAN, [no. 30. 

Huron County, which also has branches. Near Harrison, in Clare 
County, are others, some of the finest that I have seen. Entering 
the valley of the South Branch of Muskegon River there are others, 
in T. 14 N., R. 8 W. But many that I have noticed I have not yet 
been able to connect into significant channels. Now, while sometimes 
the old channels abandoned by the streams from the melting ice sheet 
stand perfectly empty, more often they are occupied by marshes at 
least, and not infrequently by lakes, the hollows occupied by the 
lakes having been made by the melting of a lump of ice (kettle-holes), 
by irregular settling of the sand, by an original sand bar in the stream, 
or by delta sand washed in by some tributary Glacial or post-Glacial 
stream. Many of the long, winding, and generally shallow " crooked" 
lakes, are thus located. 

It is obvious that thus to uncover and drain the higher lands must 
produce, first of all, a peculiarly unnatural form of drainage. A 
marked type of river valley is thus produced. (See fig. 6.) All the 
larger streams begin to flow to the south, starting from some of the 
lines of drainage from the ice. They run along the ice front opposite 
a moraine, which, as a comparison of fig. 6 and PL II shows, is often 
a divide, and receive, of course, some tributaries from the north, 
which usually flow in valleys of ice outlets, but also receive a great 
many streams, perhaps smaller individually, which flow down the 
back of the moraine last deserted. At some point in their flow they 
reach the old lake shores, unless they are first diverted by some stream 
which has cut back through the moraine, and thence flow more directly 
down to the present lake. This accounts for two of the most striking 
facts in studying the drainage of the Michigan streams, namely: (1) 
The principal stream valleys curve so as to be concave northward ; 
(2) the principal streams receive more numerous tributaries from the 
south. The Manistee is a most striking illustration of this tendency, 
while the Bear and the Betsie (Aux Bees Scies), near by, are similar. 
But so far as the curve is concerned, hardly anj^thing can be more 
striking than the way in which the Tittabawassee on the one side and 
the Cass on the other curve around Saginaw Bay to me in Saginaw 
River. 

The simplest and most natural form of drainage occurs where a 
smooth, tilted plain is lifted above water level. There all the rain 
water can run straight to the lake, or allowing for minute undula- 
tions, gather into small streams which run parallel to each other 
down the slope. This simple type of drainage is almost perfectly and 
typically illustrated along the east side of the Thumb in Huron and 
Sanilac counties, and it may be seen in small areas elsewhere. I 
have noted in one section of Elm wood Township (T. 14 N., R. 10 E.) 
four distinct parallel water courses traversing diagonally a section of 
land a mile square. 

It is obvious that the type of drainage produced by first opening the 



LANE.] 



GEOLOGY AND TOPOGRAPHY. 



63 



higher lands to drainage is just the reverse. Hence it is subject to 
rearrangement. The Lower Peninsula of Michigan might, were it 
closely and accurate^ contoured, become a classical land for the study 
of the phenomena of stream capture. One can see it taking place 
even now. Ditches are found of which one end drains into one river 
valley, and the other end into another river valley (e. g., south of Bad 
Axe, T. 16 N., R. 12 E.), but little by little one stream will come to drain 
the ditch more than the other. 

Instances of reversed drainage are therefore not uncommon. One 
instance, previously cited by students, is that the lower part of Dow- 
agiac Creek has been reversed so that the St. Joseph now flows up it 
and to the lake that way, instead of south to Keokuk, as formerly. 
Another clear case is in 
Huron County, where the 
Upper Willow occupies a 
valley once a Glacial outlet 
by way of the Cass to the 
south. In fact Shebeon, 
Pinnebog, and Pigeon riv- 
ers, especially the last, are 
encroaching on the Cass 
and will probably deprive 
it of the North Fork that 
comes down from Huron 
County. The Pigeon, using 
a Glacial channel to the 
Cass that it has reversed, 
has already effected an en- 
trance into the main valley 
of the North Fork of the 
Cass. Man is assisting in 
this readjustment, for it is 
obviously to his interest to 

reclaim the rich lands of the swamps and the drained lakes 
the shortest possible lines. 

The streams which drained the ice front have many features that 
make them an easy prey to pirate streams. In the first place, flowing 
along the higher lands, with a circuitous course, they have easy grades, 
which weaken their power of erosion. In the second place, the ice 
streams, of which they are now deprived, carved valleys much too 
large for them and brought down much debris — more than the present 
streams can handle ; and much of the debris was so coarse that there 
is a constant tendency for the water to percolate through the sand and 
gravel and do no erosive work whatever, except some little chemical 
erosion, which leaves the beds even more permeable than before. This 
is quite noticeable in the North Fork of the Cass, the bed of which 




:::: -:^£$///a ( 



Fig. 7.— Diagram illustrating method of stream capture. 
A, dry channel; B, deeper encroaching channel with 
springs on its sides. 



along 



64 WATER RESOURCES OF LOWER PENINSULA OF MICHIGAN, [no. 30. 

shows that its erosive work is nearly at an end, for vegetation is press- 
ing hard npon it. Now, as the vigorous headwaters of the pirate 
streams push into the plain of sand and gravel of such an old valley 
they naturally lower the water level, and the water of the valley is 
drained away by seepage through the sand and gravel. The annexed 
figure (fig. 7) is an ideal illustration of lateral seepage from an actual 
case; fig. 8 is also instructive. In fig. 7 the valleys are nearly paral- 
lel. In fig. 8 the attacking stream is working in at right angles to the 
ancient valley course. In many parts of the State one will come across 
valleys where, judging from the vegetation, there is now rarely any 
surface-water erosion, as the water sinks in and is absorbed hy the 
sands and gravels (e. g., sec. 34, T. 24N., R. 2 E.). 

In some parts of the region of overwash sand and gravel kame 
plains (e. g., around Harrison, T. 19 N., R. 4 W., and Grayling, T. 
26 23"., R. 4 W.) one may have to sink 100 feet or more in surficial 
deposits before reaching water, and may then reach a real surface 
seepage water, while even the deep valleys are dry most of the year, 
so perfect is the subsurface drainage. 

LAKES OF LOWER MICHIGAN. 

The lakes of Michigan are numerous. Estimates of their number 
vary from five to fifteen thousand. There are twenty-five in the 
township of Grattan (T. 8 N"., R. 9 W.) alone. They are of great 
importance as direct sources of water supply, as reservoirs which tend 
to steady the stream flow, and, finally, when they disappear, as fur- 
nishing the black muck soil, with a shell-marl subsoil, that has 
proved wonderfully adapted to celery and other culture. The accom- 
panying illustration, PL III, B, shows a field of onions on such land. 
It is the second type of lake — the shallow lake of the interlobate 
drainage — which is especially likely to be thus filled. The remarks 
concerning the lakes of the Kalamazoo River Basin, page 24, apply 
very nearly to any other part of the Lower Peninsula above the line 
of the old lake extensions, colored blue on PL II. 

The following description has been taken from an unprinted paper, 
by Prof. C. A. Davis, read before the botanical section, Michigan 
Academy of Sciences, giving a graphic description of these pools : 

" The lakes of the State, exclusive of the Great Lakes, cover an area 
of 1,225 square miles, or more than 784,000 acres, or about y-j-g- of the 
total area of the State, and they are so distributed that there is hardly 
a botanist in Michigan who can not readily reach one or more of them. 

"The small lakes, particularly those of the Lower Peninsula, are 
commonly depressions in the drift, shallow and not of large extent, 
frequently partially filled in around the margin with the remains of 
former generations of plants, so that many of the typical features of 
lakes of hilly or mountainous regions are partly suppressed or entirely 
wanting. These lakes belong to recent geological time, and this 
undoubtedly accounts for some of their peculiarities. By far the 



lane.] LAKES OF LOWER MICHIGAN. 65 

larger number of them exhibit the following features. A small sheet 
of water, roughly elliptical in shape, bordered by a marshy area of 
varying width, or on two or more sides by low, abruptly sloping, sandy, 
or gravelly hills. The marshy tract is frequently wider on the south 
than on the north side, and its character varies from a quaking bog at 
the inner margin through a sphagnous zone into a swamp, in which 
the prevailing trees may be tamarack, cedar, or spruce. The plants 
of the sphagnum zone are characteristically those of the boreal-life 
zone, and in such lake margins we find northern plants reaching their 
southern limits. The quaking bog is usually a lake ward extension of 
the shore plants and is a closely woven turf of the roots and root- 
stocks of various species of Carex, Cyperus, grasses, and at its outer 
margin consists sometimes of Typha latifolium and Sparganium eury- 
carpum. In the larger lakes the marshy border may not extend 
entirely around the margin, but it is usually noticeable along the 
southern shore, where it may be of considerable extent, while the rest 
of the shore is entirely without it." 

Most of the lakes of Michigan belong, in origin, to the two classes 
already described, i. e., they are either inclosed between moraine 
ridges or are left as pools in the kame plains of sand and gravel. 
Lakes of these two classes are usually more than 750 feet above tide. 
In general, the regions of numerous lakes are the regions of crowded 
moraine belts, and they may be approximately traced in this way. 
But there are two or three other classes of lakes thafc deserve mention. 

First, there is a class of lakes which arise from the erosion of lime- 
stone into caves that finally tumble in and produce sink holes. 
Though there are some indications of sink holes in the Carboniferous 
limestones, lakes of the sink-hole class are, so far as known, practi- 
cally confined to the lower Devonian limestones (Traverse and Dun- 
dee) and occur only in the extreme southeast (Ottawa Lake, T. 8 S., 
R. 6 E.) and northeast (e. g., sec. 32, T. 33 N., R. 6 E.) of the State. 

Second, there is a class of lakes which may be in part in rock or 
moraine basins, but which owe their distinct existence to the fact that 
the Great Lakes now, or at a higher stage of water, have built sand 
bars across the mouth of long bays and have thus cut them off from 
the main body of water. Such lakes are frequently less than 25 feet 
above the water level. A good illustration is the lake to the right in 
the view of Sleeping Bear Point (PL V), or Pine Lake, near Charle- 
voix, which is now reconnected by an artificial channel with Lake 
Michigan (T. 34 N., R. 8 W.), and it is easy to see, from the map or 
from PI. IV, that Grana Traverse Bay might be converted into such 
a lake. 

Some of the lakes are nothing more than old river valleys flooded 
by the tilting of the earth's crust and the consequent encroachment of 
the lake on the land. This is a class not clearly separate from the 
others. Such lakes occur by the score along the west coast of Michi- 
gan from Kalamazoo River to Frankfort, and seem to be submerged 
irr 30 5 



66 WATER RESOURCES OF LOWER PENINSULA OF MICHIGAN, [no. 30. 

river valleys, 1 but the bars built across their mouths, are as in the 
second class. 

If, as Professor Gilbert has said, the land is rising to the northeast 
at the rate of 5 inches a century for each 100 miles, it is easy to see 
that such a stream as Saginaw River will also tend to be ponded back; 
and, in fact, so far as current is concerned, Saginaw River is now but 
a long, narrow lake. 

When the ice lobes retired so that the heights of the rock surface 
lay in front of them, crowned by a heavy moraine, the water gathered 
in front of them in great lakes. The debris brought by streams in 
the ice was, in this case, laid down more smoothly and stratified with 
the clay that accompanied it. Thus the topography of these moraines 
laid down under water is far more gentle than that of the earlier 
ridges. On the east side the lake in front of the Huron-Erie lobe, as 
shown by Gilbert in the Ohio reports, drained off past Fort Wayne 
into the Maumee, and the waters of this lake level were about 220 feet 
above Lake Erie or 785 feet above tide level. Toward the north the 
beach lines are at a somewhat higher level, the change to water-laid 
topography occurring somewhere about 800 feet above tide. 

In the center of the State a lake was penned up in the Saginaw 
Valley, as recognized by Winchell and Mudge, and flowed down Grand 
River. The highest water of this lake, as seen in the sandy gravels 
around Alma and Pompeii, seems to have been about 760 feet above 
tide, so that, as the swamps south of Ashley are about 85 feet above 
Lakes Michigan and Huron (i. e., 667 above tide), the water would have 
stood about 100 feet deep in the channel, unless it has gradually 
scoured it down to present level. It is no wonder, then, that the drift 
was scoured down to the rock at Grand Rapids and Ionia. It flowed 
into the lake which had been similarly formed in the lower end of 
Lake Michigan and was draining over into the Mississippi by the 
recently reopened Chicago outlet. This lake was at first at least 90 
to 100 feet above the present lake level, or 680 feet above tide, and 
probably more. 

As the ice retired the lake east found a number of drainage chan- 
nels across the Thumb through Sanilac and Huron counties, as indi- 
cated in PI. II. 2 Finally free communication was opened around the 
Thumb in Huron County. This produced a slight but preceptible 
drop in the water level of the eastern lake, but thereafter it remained 
relatively permanent, and is marked by a well-defined gravel line, not 
perfectly horizontal but rising a little to the north. This may be 
explained by the removal of the attraction of the ice mass to the 
north, or by a subsequent tilting. Around Ypsilanti (T. 3 S., R. 7E.) 
it is 750 feet above tide, while in Iosco County (sec. 30, T. 22 N. , R. 6 E. ) 
it is about 775 feet above tide, and in Huron County, north of Yerona 
(T. 16 K, R. 13 E.), it is about 774 feet above tide. 

1 See article by Winchell in Harper's Magazine, Vol. XLIII, July, 1871, pp. 284 and 285. 

2 See also article by F. B. Taylor, Bull. Geol. Soc. Am., Vol. VIII, 1896, p. 31. 



lane.] WELLS IN THE PLEISTOCENE. 67 

The ia.ll from this level, whether due to the opening of a new outlet 
in New York, or, as is possible, to freer communication into Lake 
Michigan, was rather sudden for the first 50 to 75 feet, for we find that 
there are but few, and these local, traces of sand ridges in this inter- 
val, that the soil is clayey, and that the general course of the streams 
is directly down the slopes toward the lakes. The drop of the next 
25 feet was comparatively slow and marked by a broad sand belt, and 
at a slightly lower level (650 feet in Huron County) was another marked 
halt. Then still lower, about 25 feet above present lake level in Huron 
County and about 17 feet in Iosco County, was a long stay, during 
which many bays were filled in or bridged by sand spits, so as to form 
lakes. 

The history of the western side of the peninsula is perhaps not so 
eventful as that of the eastern side, given above, and is not so familiar 
to me. The belt of lacustrine deposits belonging to the Great Lakes 
is naturally narrower, being only from 60 to 125 feet above the present 
lake level, but there were many large lakes. Kalamazoo County, for 
example, has been divided into eight "prairies," viz, Prairie Roncle, 
Ground Neck, Genesee, Grand, Tollands, Gull, Dry, and Climax. 
These prairies, with their black loam soil, are probably old lakes. 
(See p. 64.) The marked change of grade in Kalamazoo River near 
Kalamazoo, brought out by Mr. Horton's table (p. 37), is probably 
due to the river crossing such an old lake bottom, where the grade is 
barely enough to keep the water moving. 

Similarly, Higgins and Houghton lakes seem to be but shrunken 
remnants of a large lake drained by the Muskegon, which covered a 
large part of Roscommon County when the ice lay on both sides of it. 

There are high terraces around Traverse City and in similar situa- 
tions, which show that the ice front once dammed up a lake at a much 
higher level. in that region, a lake whose water level was as high and 
at first higher than that on the east side of the peninsula, and which 
probably drained off southwest. The study of this lake in all its 
stages would make a very interesting problem for the glacialist. The 
map (PL II) without doubt needs much correction in Leelanaw County. 
It is obvious that tlie ice projected in a long tongue into Lake Mich- 
igan and retired very slowly, much more slowly than from the high- 
lands. From the retreating cusp sprang large rivers, draining into 
Lake Michigan, whose channels were heavily lined with coarse sand, 
gravel, and bowlders — the so-called valley trains. From Cadillac to 
Elmira the line of the Grand Rapids and Indiana Railway is mainly 
through sand. 

WELLS IN THE PLEISTOCENE. 

Before taking up in detail the application of the facts noted above 
to the study of the water supply of the various districts it may be well 
to call attention to certain general statements: 

1. Clayey regions do not yield water freely. This applies first to 



68 WATER RESOURCES OF LOWER PENINSULA OF MICHIGAN, [no. 30. 

lake clays, and in slightly less degree to bowlder clays or till, known 
among drillers as "hardpan." Regions of this type are mainly 
included in the sections colored blue and light buff on the map (PL II). 

2. Sandy regions will at some depth yield a supply of water. But 
a distinction must be made between the sandy belts of the lake- 
washed region, in which the sand and gravel are a very dry, superficial 
coating to the clay beneath, liable to contamination and likely to fail 
altogether in dry seasons like 1895, and the heavier sand and gravel 
regions, which represent drainage from the ice sheet, such as the great 
gravel plains of the Muskegon, the Manistee, and the well-named Au 
Sable. In such plains water is found at considerable, often at great, 
depths, but the supply once reached is abundant. The heavy sand 
regions are mainly colored brown and crosshatched on the map (PI. II). 

3. The alternate advances and retreats, whether of ice or of lake, 
have tended to produce an alternation of deposits more or less clayey. 



1? 

5-1 


1 


"fc 5 


<r> 


§ £ 


^ 




5 


it 


§ 


9 >o 


^ 
«« 




•Sjp 


°^X 


II 








Fig. 8.— Profile near Rose City, Michigan, a, impervious beds— clayey till; b, pervious beds- 
sand and gravel; x, springs. Horizontal scale, 1 mile=l inch; vertical scale, 400feet=l inch. 

It is easy to see that in the case of a lake such deposits will dip slightly 
from the lake margin toward the lower, deeper parts of the lake bot- 
tom. But the same thing is true also of ice. The ice front would 
retire from the highlands, leaving an apron of gravel in front, and then 
a little change of climate would produce a readvance, in which it 
would roll up the apron ahead of it or roll over it and deposit a gravel 
clay (ground moraine) upon it. Or, if it retired so far as to leave a 
lake between it and its past position, it might push the lake clays on 
top of the shore gravels of this lake. That is in many cases what has 
occurred. In some cases, of course, the pervious bed is entirely 
destroyed; but often the pervious bed remains as a good source of 
water, and has head enough to produce a flow. Close to the lake- 
ward side of prominent moraines, shown upon the map (PL II), flows 
from the drift may be expected. The cross section near Rose City 
(fig. 8) illustrates this principle. In the midst of moraine regions 



lane.] METHODS OF SINKING WELLS. 69 

there is confused and broken topography, springs are common, and 
there are often small groups of flowing wells in the low grounds. 

4. The ice was very likely to leave some gravel in all sheltered, i. e., 
southern sloping, parts of the rock surface or the valleys therein. If 
the rock itself was not impervious there was some circulation of water 
along it which leached out channels. Thus it is the rule, though not 
without exceptions, that just above the rock surface there is a water- 
bearing stratum. 

METHODS OF SINKING WELLS. 

While the wells in the rock have been almost invariably drilled, there 
has been considerable variety in the method of putting down wells in 
the drift, and a brief recapitulation may be suggestive. 

First, of course, are the dug wells. Where experience has shown 
that many bowlders and stones are likely to be encountered, digging 
will probably prove the most economical method. Wells are dug 2 feet 
or more in diameter, and are variously cased. From all parts of the 
State come complaints that wooden casing soon rots and makes the 
water foul, and is almost always used longer than it ought to be. 

Another form of casing is stoning, where stones are plenty. The dis- 
advantage of stoning is, however, that it does not keep out the sur- 
face waters. 

Where stone is scarce brick casing is often used, also large crocks, 
or sewer pipe about 2 feet in diameter. Properly sealed against sur- 
face water, these make excellent casings, though fragile and likely to 
be cracked by uneven settling of the earth. 

A plan followed in some extra deep drift wells and worthy of wider 
adoption, is the use of a boiler plate shield and the cementing of 
the well as it is dug. Mr. E. R. Phillips has his well in Bay City 
cemented down to its bottom and a bed of charcoal and clean sand 
therein — an excellent plan for those who must use wells in unsatisfac- 
tory localities. 

The disadvantage of combining a dug basin with some other form 
of well, and the various disadvantages of a lack of thorough casing 
are described on page 72. 

Another kind of well is the driven well. This is a great favorite in 
the sandy and gravelly districts of the areas covered by Glacial drain- 
age deposits (colored brown and crosshatched on the map, PL II). 
In the heavy clays of the lake clay areas (colored blue on the same 
map) it is quite common to use an earth auger and bore down, and 
this may be combined with driving where necessary. 

The chief difficulties encountered are stones too large to be pushed 
aside, which have to be dynamited, quicksand, and fine sand, like 
that of an hourglass, which runs in faster than it can be pumped out. 
In going through strata carrying quicksand, work should be contin- 
ued night and day without interruption. I do not know that artifi- 
cially freezing or cementing the quicksand bed has ever been tried in 



70 WATER RESOURCES OF LOWER PENINSULA OF MICHIGAN, [no. 30. 

the State, though it would be effective. It would seem that especially 
in case of quicksand, a mode of sinking wells illustrated by PL III, 
A, might prove very effective. This method consists of forcing down, 
in a smaller pipe within the casing, a current of water, under a very 
strong head (sometimes steam is also used), which scours out the soils 
and lets the casing drop as it is tapped. There is thus no opportunity 
for the sand beyond the reach of the very strong current to pile in. 
These quicksand beds sometimes contain water, but the well becomes 
easily clogged if its point is near quicksand. 

EASTERN SHORE DISTRICT. 

For the purpose of detailed description the State may be divided 
into seven sections. 1 

In the eastern shore district is included nearly all the country which 
slopes off to the east from the land water-laid moraines along the east- 
ern part of Huron County down to Monroe. The surface soil is pre- 
dominantly clay. This is varied by strips of sand along the streams, 
composed of successive deltas and old shore lines more or less parallel 
to the lake, 2 along which the ridge roads often run. On the clay no 
surface wells can be obtained and deep wells prevail. On the sand 
ridges shallow surface wells can be obtained, but are likely to fail in 
dry times and are, besides, at all times liable to pollution. In boring 
down an impervious lake clay or a gravelly clay, generally known as 
hardpan, is found. Interlaminated streaks of gravel are few and not 
uniform, except that generally just above bed rock there is a porous 
water-bearing seam. In the extreme south of this district through 
Monroe County, from Ottawa Lake to Sibleys (an area colored red 
on the map, PI. VI), limestone outcrops are found, and the drift is 
accordingly shallow, but in passing to the northwest there is very soon 
encountered about 80 feet or so of the blue and gravelly clay. Where 
this clay overlies the limestone sulphureted hydrogen, which may also 
spring from the decomposition of the sulphide of iron in the drift, is 
generally accumulated, and the deeper wells — the so-called sulphur 
springs — are heavily charged with it. Where black shale underlies — 
and there is black shale both above and below the Berea grit — burn- 
ing gas is very likely to accumulate, and often excites surprising 
hopes. Most of the deeper wells in Wayne are charged with one or 
the other of these two gases, but no large permanent supply can 
be expected from them, though in many cases they might for a time 
furnish a house or two with a convenient fuel. Flows of water from 
gravel beds are not uncommon throughout this region, and the number 
and strength of flows increase from the shore back toward the moraine. 

1 After making these sections I noted that there was a striking parallelism between the regions 
into which I had divided the State and those into which Professor Wheeler had divided it for 
study of floral distribution. 

2 In Huron County the markedly sandy strips are 20 to 25, 68, 98 to 118, and 163 to 193 feet above 
the lake. 



lane.] SAGINAW VALLEY DISTRICT. 71 

There, too, the section of the drift becomes less monotonous, and there 
are more interlaminated gravels. At about 750 feet above tide, on 
the border of the moraine, on a line along through Britton, York, 
Milan, Ypsilanti, North ville, Birmingham, and Rochester to North 
Street, back of Port Huron, one may be reasonably sure of striking 
water which will rise nearly if not quite to the surface of the ground 
and frequently overflow. The water of these wells — e. g., that of the 
Ypsilanti waterworks — is of excellent quality. Farther down the 
slope the drift beds are less porous and the water, if obtained, is 
likely to be too highly charged with gas and mineral for comfort. 

Through this district, therefore, the sources of water supply may 
be summarized as follows : 

(1) Lakes. Only the Great Lakes are of practical importance and 
are the only satisfactory supply for large towns. 

(2) Surface wells. The wells are generally very shallow and exhaust- 
ible. Wells from gravel or sand "pockets" in the clay are very 
uncertain, but are likely to flow for a time. The Pagoda spring of 
Mount Clemens appears to belong to this class, but yields more 
freely than is usually the case. Toward the upper margin of the 
district the supply is more abundant. 

(3) Wells from base of drift. These are almost always present; the 
supply is ample and the flow probable. They are free from contami- 
nation, and are somewhat highly mineralized, but probably not to a 
degree to render them useless. 

SAGINAW VALLEY DISTRICT. 

In this district is included the drainage of Saginaw River and part 
of the surface drainage — about to the 750-foot line and including the 
part once covered by Lake Saginaw. The rock surface is exceed- 
ingly variable. The old coal measure plateau was cut up by gorges 
100 to over 200 feet deep, which are more extensive than can be 
shown on the map (PL VI). But the present surface is flat and is 
varied only by the valleys which the larger streams have cut from 10 
to 30 feet below the plain. First with moraine till, and then with 
the lake clays, the rough rock surface has been plastered nearly 
smooth. Thus the depth of surface deposits is not uniform, varying 
from even to 500 feet, but being generally about 80 to 100 feet. 
Finally, sand ridges frequently occur about 25 feet above the lake, 
then again, as near Hemlock City, about 70 feet above the lake (655 
above tide), and again about 160 feet above the lake (742 to 766 feet 
above tide), as at Alma, ithaca, Gagetown, and Cass City. 

These sand ridges yield surface water, easily exhausted and liable 
to contamination. On the clay lands between them the farmers have 
to go deeper for water, and rarely fail to find it. In most places there 
are beds of quicksand, which yield water under the clay and very 
often gravel. Waters from these horizons always rise well, and in 



72 WATER RESOURCES OF LOWER PENINSULA OF MICHIGAN, [no. 30. 



WATER_ L£V£L_ , — , 
IWK» LEVEL, ..,»«♦** 



OLD £P~~~ 
MTfiU jj- 

-k— ■ 



UNCONSOLIDATED OR 



_ . i£. i££ r T '"ES 



5 SURFACE MATERIAL 



many places flow, especially near the 700-foot contour. The quick- 
sand wells, however, easily clog up and are short lived. The quality 
of the water is not so unexceptionable as the quantity. It is generally 
hard and not infrequently somewhat mineralized. But throughout 
all this region as good water, with as good or better head, can usually 
be obtained from underlying sandstones. 

To the southeast in this district the drift coating is very thin, from 
to 40 feet, and outcrops in the streams occur ; but toward the west 
the coating becomes thicker. Thus, at St. Johns it is 141 feet 
deep; at Midland, 198 to 300 feet; at Mount Pleasant, 250 to 350; at 
Coleman, 300; and the greatest known depth of drift in this dis- 
trict lies at Alma, 495 feet. To the northwest in this region it will 
be exceptional cases and exploration for other things than water 
which will lead wells to rock. Especially is this true since ample 

supplies of flowing water can 
generally be obtained from the 
quicksands, which are very dif- 
ficult to drill through. It will be 
noted, moreover, that this part 
of the region lies in a southwest 
direction from the gypsum quar- 
ries of Alabaster. This is the di- 
rection of Glacial motion. Hence 
it is not surprising to find gypsum 
disseminated through the drift. 
Prof. C. A. Davis has called at- 
tention to a bowlder of gypsum 
as large as two fists, which he dis- 
covered near Alma. This is cer- 
tainly exceptional, and is of interest as showing the recent date of ice 
movement. A certain amount of gypsum is disseminated through the 
drift in this region and gets into the water. This is most marked at 
Mount Pleasant and in the region immediately around, as at Leaton. 
Here the wells in the drift, whether deep or shallow, are, without 
exception, permanently hard and highly impregnated with sulphate of 
lime. These mineral waters, though free from bacterial contamina- 
tion and not likely to produce typhoid and diphtheria, are said to be 
injurious to the bowels and bladder of certain constitutions, while 
they might be what others need. Persons in this region who tend to 
a uric acid diathesis might find filtered rain water better than patent 
medicines. A trace of common salt, or lithium carbonate or sodic 
sulphate, might be added to remove the flat taste of the water. 

This district is much like the first except that gas is not common in 
the wells. The wells in surface sands are usually shallow and easily 
exhausted in dry times. Deeper wells in quicksand or gravel in or 
under the clay can generally be obtained, but the water is often very 



^IMPERVIOUS BEO^ = s 



■•POROUS- BED : : ■•.-. 



Fig. 



-Diagram illustrating evils of insufficient 
casing. 



lane.] NORTHEASTERN SHORE DISTRICT. 73 

hard. The thickness of drift — i. e., depth to bed rock — is quite 
irregular, but is much greater to the northwest. 

One practice common in this district but not confined to it, which 
can not be too strongly deprecated, is drilling from a basin or dug 
well and letting the water resulting flow directly into the basin, the 
upper basin remaining as pervious as ever. The way in which this 
practice arises is simple and natural. A farmer begins by a dug well, 
perhaps 16 feet down in the surface sands, as in fig. 9. In a dry sea- 
son like that of 1895 his well goes dry. He borrows an augur and 
bores down through sand and then through the clay, say 20 feet 
more, and strikes another porous bed full of water under a good head, 
which rises and fills his well up far enough, and he stops satisfied. 
But in the first place the impervious clays through which he has bored 
will probably creep in and fill the hole, and in a few years the work 
will have to be repeated. In the second place, suppose that the well 
is cased from the bottom, or that the flow from the lower pervious beds 
is so strong as to keep the hole open; in dry times the water from the 
lower bed will still work out sklewise through the stone curbing into 
the upper beds that have gone dry. Thus the head of the lower beds 
will be wasted, and some neighbor who has had a flowing well from 
that bed may suddenly find his flow stopped, while he himself will 
have to exert himself more than should be necessary in operating the 
pump. Again, if there is a strong flow upward from the lower beds, 
sand may be carried up in sufficient quantities to fill the upper well 
and leave a cavity around the bottom of the hole through the impervi- 
ous beds, into which they will finally fall and seal the well, even 
though the beds themselves are cased. Finally, there is nothing to 
prevent a rainy season from reversing the process — raising the water 
level in the upper beds, changing the current, and contaminating the 
supply with rain water and surface drainage, so that the certainty of 
purity, which might easily be obtained, is lost. 

If, however, as shown by the dotted lines, the hole is cased and the 
casing continued to the surface, the head of the lower bed will be 
preserved, risk of contamination removed, and the life of the well 
lengthened. 

NORTHEASTERN SHORE DISTRICT. 

This district is occupied mainly by the drainage valley of Thunder 
Bay River, with the lower reaches of the streams which drain into 
Huron Bay between it and the Tittabawassee, and the streams, mostly 
small and insignificant, which lie to the north of Thunder Bay River. 

To the southwest of this district lies the high interior moraine 
which surrounds the Muskegon, marks most sharply the outline of 
the Michigan-Saginaw cusp, and probably includes the highest points 
of the peninsula (e. g\, 1,465 feet, at Jim Cook's knob, on the north 
line of sec, 34, T. 24 N., R. 2 E., and, it is said, 1,682 feet near Otsego). 
Near West Branch the district approaches nearest the waters of the 



74 WATER RESOURCES OP LOWER PENINSULA OF MICHIGAN, [no. 30. 

lake, and there and at Wolverine the descent, from over 1,200 feet to 
less than 700 feet, is very abrupt, especially in the stream valleys. 
This region is but newly settled and is still in large part wilderness. 

The general character of the district is somewhat as follows : Around 
the nucleus (the central district) of sand plains, about 1 ,180 feet above 
tide, except as cut by river valleys, runs a moraine, which is mainly or 
at times entirely covered with sand and frequently rises over 1,400 feet 
above tide. (See fig. 8.) There is also another sand plain, about as 
high as the inner sand plain but narrower, and then a moraine, only 
about 1,200 feet above tide, which is clayey and clothed with hard 
wood, especially on its northerly or easterly side. Then the moraine 
is deeply gullied, and there is a rapid drop to about 960 feet above 
tide, where there are again extensive sand plains. Inclosing these is 
another broken clayey morainal belt frequently 1,000 feet above tide, 
and then another drop brings us to about 800 feet above tide. Below 
this the moraines are less marked, and gravel ridges, produced as 
shore beaches, replace the extensive overwash sand plains of the 
higher regions, studded with jack pine. The soil becomes clay with 
streaks of sand, rather than sand interrupted by lines of clay hills. 
In other words, there is a series of encircling moraines as shown on 
PI. II, and between each moraine and the one next within the valley 
the space has been filled with sand, shown in brown and crosshatched, 
nearly to the level of the outer moraine, and often covering it heavily. 
In the sandy regions water may be obtained from surface sand, though 
it may be quite deep. Whenever streams like the Au Sable or Au 
Gres have cut down through the sands to underlying clays springs 
occur, and they are abundant in this region. 

The drift through all this region is probably deep, and the clay 
moraines probably mark epochs of readvance of the ice, when it was 
likely to override the sand deposits formed in front of it in its retreat. 
In the few deep wells already sunk deposits of sand and gravel are 
found under the clay and till. Wells sunk into them, especially near 
the moraine belts on the north and east sides, may be expected to 
find plenty of water with considerable head. Fig. 8, from conditions 
at Rose City, will show how favorable are the conditions for artesian 
wells. There are high, sandy gathering grounds on the side south or 
west of the moraine, and higher semi-impervious ground with higher 
water level between the gathering ground and the discharge. 1 Flow- 
ing wells may be expected, therefore, all along from West Branch past 
Rose City to Indian River. 

On the moraine belts the same sheets of water-bearing gravel may 
be struck, but the height to which the water will rise in the well 
depends on the altitude. 

On the sand plains to the southwest of a moraine belt it will be 
necessary, except in low spots, to go deep for even surface water. There 

1 Requisite and qualifying conditions of artesian wells, by T. C. Chamberlin: Fifth Ann. Rept. 
U. S. Geol. Survey, 1885, pp. 131 to 172. 



lane.] NORTHERN SHORE DISTRICT. 75 

are a great many fine, undeveloped water powers in this region, and 
lakes are quite numerous. The quality of the water is generally 
excellent. It is, of course, hard, and it has been stated that 80 per 
cent of horse diseases are due to hard water. The water is not suited 
to boiler use. But the hard water of this region probably differs 
from that of Saginaw Valley and around Mount Pleasant, in that its 
hardness is largely temporary, as letting the water stand removes 
some, and boiling or breaking with quicklime all, of the hardness, 
which consists of lime and iron. 

On the other side of Thunder Bay River a smooth moraine, which 
covers an underlying limestone ridge, gently rises. The coating of 
drift is shallow, the underlying limestones are pervious, and it is often 
necessary to go down into rock to obtain a permanent water supply. 

Throughout this district there are many ponds. In some the water 
is said to be quite soft. The ponds are either clay moraine tarns, 
crooked lakes left in abandoned channels of the old ice drainage, or 
sometimes sink holes and valleys in the limestone. At present their 
main worth is to the hunter, the fisherman, and the lumberman, but the 
time may come when they will be useful as reservoirs for mill streams 
or as town water supplies. In most of this district good water supplies 
can also be obtained from the rock, though at considerable depths. 

WESTERN SHORE DISTRICT. 

There is much greater difficulty in defining, by natural characteris- 
tics, this district than some of the previous ones. There is a series of 
moraines which come diagonally down toward Lake Michigan (see 
PI. V), becoming gradually lower, more extended, and more undu- 
lating in contour. The moraines are heavily swathed in gravels, sands, 
and clays of the valley trains which lie between them. At the extreme 
north of this district, from Bay View and Petoskey southwest, there is 
a rock ridge, and there is probably also a rock ridge from Grand 
Rapids northwest into Oceana County, where the drift covering is 
comparatively thin. Between these ridges the drift is very thick, so 
that only the deep salt or mineral wells strike rock, which is encoun- 
tered 500 or 600 feet down. Probably the relief of the rock surface is 
considerable. This thick layer of drift is generally varied in section, 
as the wells at Big Rapids, Traverse City, etc., show, and various 
sands and gravels yield water; and on lower grounds, as at Traverse 
City, at the Nochemo springs (really wells), near Reed City, around 
Empire and White Cloud, and at Mecosta, flows are likely to occur. The 
level of the flows at these places is below that in the adjacent country, 
but on the higher grounds, as about Walton, especially on the great 
sand and gravel plains which are so pronounced a feature, it is often 
necessary to go 100 feet or more to reach water. Usually, however, 
water can be reached by a drive well, and of course water at such depths 
is steadier in supply and freer from some forms of contamination. 



76 WATER RESOURCES OF LOWER PENINSULA OF MICHIGAN, [no. 30. 

The deeper a surface-water well is the farther it should be away from 
any privy. 

At the extreme north, north of Harbor Springs, there is a singular 
district, which seems to have an exceedingly heavy coating of drift 
and overwash gravel and which is so porous that wells must be sunk 
300 or 400 feet to water. 

Toward the south in this district there is a region of shallower wells 
and drift, but the varied character of the drift continues. Occasion- 
ally a section will be found which shows no pervious bed ; this may 
be expected mainly along the moraines, indicated in PI. II. Usually, 
however, even in the belts marked as moraine ridges, sufficient minor 
alternations in the drift exist. 

The relatively greater thickness of drift, and the ample supply of 
water which may be obtained from the Glacial drainage gravel deposits, 
account for the relative scarcity of strongly mineralized waters in the 
area of the coal measures and Michigan series compared with those 
in Saginaw Valley. } 

NORTH CENTRAL DISTRICT. 

This district includes the upper valleys of Manistee, Muskegon, 
and Au Sable rivers, and is bounded by the northeast district and the 
west district, previously described, or, in a general way, by the second 
of the series of ascending moraines, which passes through Lewiston. 
On the south it may conveniently be brought down to the second cor- 
rection line of the Land Office, or about to the Ann Arbor Railroad. 
As thus defined, the district is characteristically sandy. The depth 
of drift is probably often very great, how great is not known, as no 
wells have reached rock. 

Wells are generally driven, not drilled, and water may be from 17 
to 60, 80, or even 180 feet through the sand, depending on the alti- 
tude. The first encircling moraine appears to be as sandy as the inter- 
vening plains, though the sand may mask clay. On the lower parts 
of the plains, as at Roscommon, there is but 12 to 14 feet of sand above 
clay, and below this clay are sheets of water which flow, or at least 
have good heads. The water is said to be comparatively soft, but it 
is by no means equal to rain water. 

SAGINAW MORAINE DISTRICT. 

This central part of the State lies higher than the old lake bottoms 
of Saginaw Valley and the eastern shore, and is more varied in its 
topography. It is generally undulating, with 20 to 30 foot rolls, and 
occasionally rises to hills 100 to 200 feet high. While, as a whole, it 
lies on a rock ridge — largely the Marshall sandstones — the rock surface 
does not at all conform to the minor undulations of the present sur- 
face. Consequently the depth of the drift varies, occasionally exceed- 
ing 200 feet but being more usually 30 to 50 feet. Over these areas 
there is a great variety in the drift deposits. 



lane] DEEPER WELLS AND PALEOZOIC STRATIGRAPHY. 77 

While in the eastern shore district the drift is almost uniformly 
clay or bowlder clay, here there are alternations of sand and gravel 
with till (hardpan), sometimes many of them, indicating retreats and 
readvances of the ice. The axis of the Thumb lies in this district, 
and it is traversed by many Glacial drainage channels with heavy 
valley trains, which yield abundant surface water. 

Consequently, much less can be said about this district as a whole 
than about some others. Usually water is found above the rock, but as 
the rock waters are good and ample there are also numerous deep rock 
wells. Frequently the streams have cut down through the overlying 
sand or gravel to clay beneath, and in these cases springs are certain 
to appear. Occasionally erosion has reached bed rock. Not infre- 
quently on the lower lands flowing wells, as well as springs, may be 
obtained, and they are found scattered all over the area; but on the 
higher lands and moraine ridges it is necessary to bore deep for water. 
Along the margin of this district, however, there is a sudden drop of 
the country, and along this belt wells are very likely to occur with 
flow ample enough in many cases, as at Rochester, for town supply. 
The quality of the water is almost invariably good — hard but not 
otherwise strongly mineralized. 

SOUTH CENTRAL DISTRICT. 

The conditions here are practically as in the Saginaw moraine dis- 
trict. The coating of drift over the sandstones in the valleys is usu- 
ally thin, while beneath the hills it is 100 feet or more thick. Between 
the hills are usually swamps and Glacial drainage deposits or valley 
trains. In some places in Hillsdale County the drift is found to fill 
and obliterate pre-Glacial channels. One of these lies about 5 miles 
northwest of Jonesville; and another, which traverses the county 
from east to west, passing near Osseo, has been described by Mr. 
H. P. Parmelee in a paper read before the American Association for 
the Advancement of Science, but not published. 

DEEPER WELLS AND PALEOZOIC STRATIGRAPHY. 

Below the mantle of sands, gravels, clays, and till which we have 
considered in the last section, the drill encounters the consolidated 
rocks of the Paleozoic series. Among the rocks the drillers readily 
distinguish the black, white, blue, red, and sandy shales, the white 
or brown sandstones, and the harder limestones. Soap rock or soap- 
stone is usually very clayey, and is often a calcareous shale. Between 
limestone and dolomite no distinction is made, although the latter is 
sometimes mistaken for sandstone. The last two, especially when 
full of chert nodules, "flint" layers, etc., are usually much more dif- 
ficult to drill than sandstones and shales. Sometimes a ball of pyrite 
or a nodule of sideritic iron ore will resist the drill as effectually as 
flint, and may pass for such. The variation in hardness naturally 



78 WATER RESOURCES OF LOWER PENINSULA OF MICHIGAN, [no. 30. 

makes a great difference in the cost of drilling. While for 2-inch 
holes in the softer strata (the coal measures or Coldwater shales) 50 
cents a foot has been a standard rate and will yield good wages if there 
is no special difficulty encountered, some specially hard layer of a foot 
may take more time than all the rest of the well ; and in general through 
the State wells have cost about $1 a foot. Usually half the time 
at least in drilling a well is consumed in overcoming exceptional diffi- 
culties and in making repairs. 

In mere churn drillings coal is difficult to distinguish from black 
shale, at least to determine its exact thickness; though an expert, by 
turning the drill 90 degrees each time and thus getting larger pieces, 
and by noting especially the peculiar crunch under the drill, which may 
be felt if the hand is on the rope, may ascertain approximately the 
nature and thickness of a deposit. Gypsum or plaster is another sub- 
stance which is often not recognized, and which it is highly important 
to avoid if good drinking water is desired. 

Usually, just before striking through shale into a strong stream of 
water with a good head, a certain springiness of the churn drill is 
noticed by the driller, which warns him that some new development 
may soon be expected, and it is common to find a red layer or a hard 
cap (specially charged with pyrite) or crust just before piercing a 
stratum containing salt water. Is not the sulphur of the ferrous sul- 
phide of the hard cap, or the ferric oxide of the red shales derived 
from the sulphates of the brine ? 

A description of the rock series, not primarily from the view of the 
paleontologist or general geologist but from that of the seeker after 
water — fresh, medicinal, or salt — follows. 

CARBONIFEROUS FORMATION. 
JACKSON COAL MEASURES TO MARSHALL SANDSTONE. 

The central part of the State, as shown by the map, PI. VI, and by 
the cross section, fig. 10, is occupied by a series of rocks belonging to 
the Carboniferous formation, in some respects not unlike the coal 
measures of Ohio and Indiana, with some beds that can be closely 
paralleled with those coal measures and yet with such marked points 
of difference as to render it probable that for most of the time, at 
any rate, there was little or no continuous connection with any other 
State, but that the rocks were laid down in an inland sea, between 
Canadian highlands on the north and flat reaches of the emerging- 
continent on the south. At the base of the series is a heavy white 
sandstone — the Napoleon or Upper Marshall — which is very massive 
and thick to the east and southeast, as shown in fig. 12, but becomes 
somewhat thinner toward the north, although it is rarely less than 50 
feet of well-defined water-bearing sandstone. It lies directly under 
the drift, as the map shows, through most of the broad belt of higher 
land that extends from the Thumb down to Hillsdale County. It is a 



6 




» -<£\ I N&*r 






'tslfn 



■F 






3" 



# V 



1 



LANE.] 



CARBONIFEROUS FORMATION. 



79 



prolific water bearer, yielding numerous flowing wells at a moderate 
depth (250 feet) throughout the west part of Huron County to Sebewa- 
ing. Under Tuscola county it continues, as at Fairgrove, though at 
Reese it is getting a little too salt, and so along past Flint, Vassar, and 
Birch Run, to Corunna, Lansing, and Mason. Along this line and south 
there is usually good water in this formation. There is frequently above 
this formation intensely salt or bitter waters, pierced on the way going 
down, which must be cased out. It seems that to the northwest an arm 
of the sea was cut off from the ocean, where evaporation exceeded pre- 
cipitation, depositing the gypsum beds which extend from Alabaster 
and Soule, in Huron Countj T , to Grand Rapids, and saturating the rocks 
with a verj^ salt brine. This formation has no parallel in adjacent 
States, and hence is known as the Michigan series. It consists of light- 




j&%fe*** CTP " 

>» S "~*"»«^ <> ^ "" - - "_Monrpe — """ ^^^ ** 

v >^ *"~^- lUsassL. — --"^ '*««**" 

"*" >■ -7- ^ ^ Hudson River andjUto**-*" 

Trenton 

Fig. 10.— Cross section of the Lower Michigan Basin. Horizontal scale, 1 mile = .135 inch; 
vertical scale, 1,300 feet=.321 inch. 



colored blue or gray shales, hydraulic limestones, and gypsum beds 
Its extent to the southeast seems to be somewhat irregular, as it lies in 
bays and synclinals in the Marshall sandstone. It can be followed, 
even where it does not outcrop, by its effect on the mineral waters. 

In fact, in many parts of Lower Michigan, where outcrops of bed 
rock are scarce, important geologic data can thus be gathered. In 
much of our work in Huron County, Professor Davis and I discarded 
the familiar tools of the geologist, the hammer and the compass, 
and instead carried a urinometer and a small leather case containing 
barium chloride (BaCl 2 ), for sulphate test, silver nitrate (AgN0 3 ), for 
chlorine test, ammonium oxalate — (NH 4 ) 2 C 2 4 — for lime, and some- 
times tannic acid, for iron, and went from farm to farm inquiring 
the depth to rock, etc. , and testing the waters. The line between the 
Upper Marshall or Napoleon and the Michigan series was traceable, 
sharply within a mile, by the reaction for sulphates which the latter 
series gave, and by a rapid increase in total mineral contents. This 



80 WATER RESOURCES OF LOWER PENINSULA OF MICHIGAN, [no. 30. 

purely objective line agreed with reports as to the nature of the rocks 
and the rare outcrops. (Compare PL VI and fig. 12.) For further 
details reference may be made to the forthcoming report of the State 
geological survey on Huron County. 

It is not uncommon, however, to find good fresh water in the Mar- 
shall sandstones directly beneath the Michigan series; there seem to 
be two reasons why the salt water has not worked down and charged 
the Marshall sandstone. 

In the first place, as the Marshall sandstone outcrops all around 
under the high land, there is a strong pressure, nearly if not quite 
enough to make the water in the center of the basins rise to the sur- 
face. Thus the tendency is for the water to work up rather than 
down in the lower central parts of the Michigan Basin, which are 
overlain by the Michigan series and by the outcrops. This tendency 
has been shown in hundreds of wells for fresh water and in dozens 
of wells for brine, which have been put down in the Saginaw Valley. 
The Marshall, toward the center, becomes deeper and more salt. It 
is the source of the brines of Saginaw and Bay City, of the brominif er- 
ous brine of Midland, St. Louis, and Alma, and probably of that of 
Big Rapids; it is almost saturated with salt. The salt, however, is 
not derived from above, since it is comparatively free from gypsum. 
At one time the wells in the Saginaw Valley made a really noticeable 
reduction in the percentage of salt contained in the brine. They 
may have drawn in fresh water from the sides to replace the brine 
extracted at 'the middle of the basin. The Marshall sandstone is 
generally easy drilling. 

The overlying Michigan series from Bay Port to Saginaw, Midland, 
Alma, and Grand Rapids is a trifle over 200 feet thick. The position 
and thickness of the gypsum and hydraulic limestone beds, which 
are intercalated in the prevalent series of gray or blue shales, are not 
constant. To a certain extent this appearance may be due merely to 
imperfect records. Some of the gypsum beds are quite extensive. 
To the southeast, even around Sebewaing, the gypsum feathers out. 
Of its character to the north little or nothing is known. Water from 
the Michigan series is generally scanty or strongly mineralized. Occa- 
sionally pyritiferous beds and chert}^ limestones make hard drilling. 

A change of climate, or more likely a slight depression making an 
open sea, probably caused the deposition on top of the Michigan 
series of a series of cherty limestones and sandstones of an entirely 
different character from those of the Michigan series — almost exactly 
paralleled by the Maxville limestone .of Ohio and rich in similar fos- 
sils. In this series I am now inclined to include not only the Grand 
Rapids limestone but Winchell's Parma sandstone. The sections 
and borings at Bay Port, at Charity Island, and elsewhere have con- 
vinced me that limestones and sandstones are intimately intercalated 
at this horizon. Many of the sandstones are highly cross bedded, and 
according to the observations of the writer are apparently mere sand 



lane.] CARBONIFEROUS FORMATION. 81 

bars. This is noted in the drill cores of the Bay Port quarry explo- 
rations by Roininger, who called it an unconformity, also on Charity 
Island, and by Winchell in his original description of the Parma 
around Jackson. The Bay Port limestone has the strongest possible 
resemblance to the Grand Rapids limestone in character and in 
fossils, and both are intimately associated with and underlain by 
sandstones. 

The brines of this horizon, as pointed out by Garrigues, run higher 
in sulphates of lime, etc. , and lower in earthy chlorides than do those 
of the Marshall; this is in harmony with the general theory of the 
upward pressure of the waters of the basin. The Parma sandstone 
is not always recognizable as distinct from the Marshall, although to 
the north from Bay Port it can be fairly well traced to Sebewaing, 
Bay City, Midland, Alma, and as far as Ithaca to the southeast 
toward Corunna and Flint. As the Michigan series feathers out this 
Parma sandstone either feathers out also or merges in the great shore 
development of the Marshall sandstone. (See fig. 10.) I now think 
that the record of the Jackson well is misinterpreted. 1 The Parma 
and Marshall are both probably merged in the great sandstone from 
83 to 373 feet below the surface, the dividing line being perhaps near 
200 feet, while the blue sandstones at 415 and 660 feet are probably 
merely minor beds of the Lower Marshall or Coldwater, respectively — 
Cuyahoga formations, especially as they are not free water bearers. 

Returning once more to the Parma horizon — that of the Grand 
Rapids and Bay Port limestones — the water is usually hard, but at 
Bay Port it is quite pure, and no doubt is the water horizon of many 
wells besides those at Ithaca, especially in the region about Mason, 
Lansing, Owosso, and Birch Run, where thus far it can hardly be 
separated from the Marshall. It has been but little used for brine. 

Above the Parma comes a varied series of black shales, lire clays, 
black band iron ores, and coals and sandstones. The sandstones 
usually yield water, but the water is generally quite mineralized 
(being occasionally prescribed for the sick) and is sometimes a 
brackish water which cattle drink greedily. Wells in the coal meas- 
ures generally have a good head, and frequently flow. The sand- 
stones are generally white, except well up in the series, while to the 
northwest, around Ionia, Ashley, St. Johns, St. Louis, and in Gar- 
field Township (T. 16 N., R. 3 E.) there are records of a red sand- 
stone, which Winchell called the Woodville sandstone. This red 
sandstone also yields water which is rather strongly mineralized, but 
it is yet little known, and it can not be said how far the red color is 
due to surface oxidation. In some cases it appears too thick for that 
and reminds one of the upper barren coal measures of Ohio and 
West Virginia, and, as at Saginaw, it appears to be quite uncon- 
formable on the coal measures proper. 

1 Geol. Survey Michigan, Vol. V, Part II, 1895, PI. XXIII. 

I RR 30 6 



82 WATER RESOURCES OF LOWER PENINSULA OF MICHIGAN, [no. 30. 



CORRELATION. 




Michigan series . 




DESCRIPTION. 
-285, surface formations. 



Sand, ciay, and till ; 30 feet sand, bowlders, 
and earth on top, then 100 feet hard red and 
white clay. 



Analyzed : Sp. gr., 1.001 ; T., 53° F. 



Depth to rock, from 200 to 300 feet in the 
various wells ; showing a little coal. 



-318, micaceous sandstone. 
-345, black soft fire clay. 



345-420, sandstone ; water overflows. 
Analyzed(?): Sp.gr., 1.005 to 1.012 ;T., 55o F. 



455-525, sandstone. 



525-575, shale. 
Hard sandstone. 



-700, black shale. 



700-745, shale, with FeC03, etc. 
745-810, black shale. 



white sandstone ; water overflows. 
Sp. gr., 1.125 to 1.147. 



Upper Marshall 



100 



920-970, calcareous shale. 



970-1,050, gypsum (anhydrite). 



1,050-1,130, argillaceous limestone. 



1,130-1,250, limestone. 



1,205-1,305, clean white sandstone. 
Analyzed: Sp.gr., 1.235, 1.239 , T., 62 V F. 



Fig. 11.— Section of well at Midland, Michigan. Altitude 
about 613 feet. 



Above the Parma at Mid- 
land (see fig. 11), or combin- 
ing the well records at St. 
Louis and Alma, there is a 
series of coal measures 400 
to 600 feet thick, and sand- 
stones are very abundant in 
the upper half, but are also 
very irregular — mere chan- 
nels which will here cut 
entirely through a coal seam 
which a few feet away will 
be as strong as ever. One 
bore hole has found no coal, 
and 30 feet away one put 
down later for water passed 
through 3 feet of coal. 
These sandstone channels 
have been excellently ex- 
hibited in some of the Jack- 
son coal mine plans by J. 
Holcroft. 

This coal basin was deeply 
cut into by stream valleys 
before the ice swept over it 
and filled them. Hence the 
depth to rock is very un- 
certain and is more uncer- 
tain toward the northwest. 
The shore ridge of Marshall 
sandstone seems to have 
acted as a divide from 
which the streams flowed, 
gathering strength as they 
went. The abundance of 
deep wells in Huron County 
has rendered it possible to 
trace quite accurately in 
the rock contours of PI. 
VI one valley which, com- 
ing down from Soule, is 
deflected by the Bay Port 
limestone and passes south 
through T. 16 K, R. 10 E., 
being about 140 feet deep, 
while on the general plateau 



lane.] CARBONIFEROUS FORMATION. 83 

around the valley the depth of drift is less than 50 feet. Thence it 
passes 3 miles southeast of Sebewaing, then close to Union ville, and on 
west. There are irregularities in the depth of wells around West Sagi- 
naw and Bay City that indicate spurs of this yaMey, and the next well- 
marked location is at Midland, where some wells, like those near 
Hubbard to the north, find only about 200 feet of drift, while others, at 
the east end of the town, find 300 feet of drift. Wells are said to have 
struck rock at 76 feet in Mount Pleasant, but on the other hand wells 
north of there have gone 160 feet, wells west 355 feet, and wells south 
205 feet without striking rock. At Alma it is 495 feet to rock, and at 
St. Louis, 3 miles away, it is only 355 feet or less, and at Ithaca 330 feet. 
At Big Rapids it is 600 feet to rock, while at Ludington, Manistee, 
and Frankfort, although close to the lake, there is a great depth of drift. 
These facts indicate clearly enough an incised valley system of 100-foot 
ravines, and also seem to indicate, contrary to Spencer's very natural 
hypothesis, followed by Mudge, 1 that the drainage of the coal basin 
was toward the west and not by Saginaw Bay, both because the depth 
of the ravine steadily increases, and also because the limestone ridge 
seems to run continuously across the mouth of Saginaw Bay, from the 
islands off Bay Port, in continuous rock bottom to Charity Island, 
and outcrops again on the north shore. The limestone may be fol- 
lowed near Omer and Prescott at a higher level than the bottom of the 
valley just described. The rock contours of PI. VI illustrate these 
facts. 

The troughs which Mr. Mudge assumes represent troughs or val- 
leys in the rock surface are sufficiently explained by the Glacial drain- 
age, which, indeed, Mr. Mudge has pointed out for the Ionia channel; 
and the very fact that in the Ionia channel the Grand River has in 
two distinct places struck bed rock far above the lower rock sur- 
face of the Saginaw Valley makes the supposition that it follows a 
rock channel rather forced. There are two other arguments of a 
general nature for my interpretation of the rock surface. In the first 
place, the rock ridge seems much more broken, the depth of drift far 
more irregular, and the topographic relief greater in the Grand Trav- 
erse region than in the Thumb of Michigan, which indicates that the 
former region is farther downstream, or nearer the master valley, than 
the latter. In the second place, the generally accepted theory of a 
greater northern elevation of the land preceding glaciation disproves 
the supposition that the gradient from Alma northeast was reversed, 
and makes the course of the valley from Bad Axe to Ithaca even more 
natural. From that point on its course is much less certain. It 
seems to have been deflected when it met the northwest-striking 
sandstones and limestones beneath the softer coal measures, at the 
southwest side of the coal basin. 

1 Am. Jour. Sci., 4th ser., Vol. IV, 1897, p. 384. 



84 WATER RESOURCES OF LOWER PENINSULA OF MICHIGAN, [no. 30. 

CARBONIFEROUS AND DEVONIAN SHALES. 
LOWER MARSHALL SANDSTONE. 

Beneath the heavy Upper Marshall sandstone which, as has already 
been mentioned, lines the shore of Huron County from Rush Lake to 
Hat Point, there are in Huron County (see fig. 12) about 260 feet of 
strata which are largely sandy flags and include three well-marked 
sandstones, one outcropping at Port Austin, another at Pointe Aux 
Barques, and another — the famous Huron blue stones, used for whet- 
stones and grindstones throughout the United States. The series is 
very ferruginous, and beds often become red and friable as the iron 
oxidizes, although they are green or blue when fresh. These sand- 
stones may be traced under cover by wells or by scattered outcrops 
through Huron County and into Sanilac County. Generally the sup- 
ply of water is ample, the quality excellent (although occasionally 
salty streaks occur in the Lower Marshall), and occasionally, as near 
Bad Axe and Port Austin, in exceptionally low ground there are 
flows. As the sandstones are traced to the west under cover, they 
are soon lost, except when they merge into a belt of red rock, paint 
rock, red shale, sandy shale, etc. , in which form they may be traced 
quite continuously as far at least as Saginaw River. They are evi- 
dently shore deposits of no wide range and have not yet been success- 
fully followed individually to the southwest. They are transition 
beds from the Upper Marshall or Napoleon sandstone to the great 
shale formation below. They are easy to drill, and extend the width 
of the Marshall belt, from which good water can be obtained a rather 
indefinite distance to the southeast. 

COLDWATER SHALES. 

Farther down, in the Coldwater shales proper, the sandstone seams 
grow thinner and finer grained, and the water contained is more apt 
to be salty. Little sheets of sandstone cemented by carbonate of iron, 
as at Pointe Aux Barques light-house, at Sand Beach, and at Rich- 
mondville, are found at various levels in the Coldwater shales, but 
in general this formation is composed of fine-grained, micaceous, 
bluish shales, easily drilled and very dry. In Caseville, about 400 
feet below the Upper Marshall, is a brine which seems to be fairly 
persistent and which is possibly even more marked to the northwest. 
In outcrop balls of carbonate of iron are frequent, and one wonders 
how often the bands of limestone recorded as encountered in drilling 
are nothing but such balls. 

BEREA SHALE AND GRIT. 

About 1,000 feet below the Upper Marshall the shales become 
blacker. The horizon of the Berea shale recognized in Ohio is reached, 
and then all along the southeastern part of the State the Berea grit is 



LANE.] 



CARBONIFEROUS AND DEVONIAN SHALES. 



85 



CORRELATION 

Pleistocene 

60 

Jackson 

41 

Michigan 

247 

Upper Marshall 

300 



Lower Marshall 

200 




Coldwater shale . 



DESCRIPTION. 
Lake clays and bowlder clays. 

Sandstone, shale, coal, and fire clay. 

Sandstone and limestone. 

White and blue and green shale, with beds 

of gypsum. 
Salt water. 
Hydraulic limestone. 



White sandstone. 
Water. 

Analyses: Bad Axe, Bay Port. 

Sandstone and grits, arenaceous shales with 

much FeCo 3 . 
Port Austin sandstone. 

Point Aux Barques sandstone. 

Huron grindstone. 

Blue shale and sand shale, with nodules and 
bands of (CaFe) Co 3> 

Point Aux Barques lighthouse. 
Salt water. 

Port Hope well. 



Sand Beach well. 
Rock Falls. 
White Rock well. 
Forestville well. 




I Black or chocolate shale. 

White to brown sandstone: Analyzed, pure 

brine. 
Bedford blue shale ?, 50 feet. 
Cleveland black shale !, 3 feet. 

E==i=J^ Erie blue or black shale, 133 feet. 



605 

Dundee 

119 



Blue argillaceous limestone, very hard. 



well developed. It is a 
horizon well known for 
brine, and is followed to 
a depth of 1,650 to 1,750 
feet at Caseville and at 
Blackmar, but is quite 
salt even when not very 
deep, as at Forestville, 
Ann Arbor, and Ypsi- 
lanti . At the latter place 
it seems to be more salt 
than underlying strata. 
It may be the source of 
some of the salt in wells 
about Ray (T. 4N.,R. 13 
E.), Utica, Wales, and 
Rochester. With black 
shales above and below it 
is not surprising that the 
Berea grit frequently 
contains gas, and that 
many of the wells which 
strike gas immediately 
beneath the clays seem 
to be located over its 
beveled edge. It does 
not seem to be a marked 
topographic feature, nor 
does it break the general 
valley of the shales above 
and below. The Berea 
brines are of very good 
quality. Where recently 
struck in Bay City, at a 
depth of 2,200 feet, it 
actually flows, which, in 
a concentrated brine, in- 
dicates a considerable 
head. 

ST. CLAIR BLACK SHALES. 

Though the Bedford 
shales immediately be- 
low the Berea afrit are 



Dolomite: Bitter water, succeeded by salt 
water; analyzed. 
*&$ Sand Beach. 

Fig. 12.— Geological column in Huron County, Michigan, often blue Or red (oxi- 

adapted to the wells at Caseville and Sand Beach but illus- -, . -, -, -, \ -, -. 1 

trative also of those at Sebewaing, Bay Port, Port Cres- aizea DlUej, DlaCK SOOn 

cent, Port Austin, Grindstone City, New River, Port ■• ^, ^^^„ ^„^/i~ *„.„^4. „4- 

Hope, white Rock, Forestville. etc. becomes predominant, at 



86 WATER RESOURCES OF LOWER PENINSULA OF MICHIGAN, [no. 30. 

first in streaks (Cleveland shale), but later in a solid mass of 100 to 
300 feet or more of bituminous shale nearly equivalent to the Ohio 
shale, a horizon widely marked and in a general way recognizable all 
over the State. This shale is somewhat sticky, but on the whole is 
easily drilled and is of importance as lying just above the horizons 
which contain most of the more famous bath waters of the State. 
From the Marshall down to the base of these black shales, with the 
possible exception of the Berea grit, there is no horizon of much 
importance either for brine or as a source of water, and in regions 
where these formations underlie the drift the prospects for rock wells 
for drinking water are not generally encouraging. Of course, near 
the outside margin good water may be obtained by drilling through to 
lower beds. 

In general this great series of shales probably makes valleys lying 
between the Marshall sandstone ridge on one side and the ridge of 
the Dundee limestones on the other, and this is exhibited in the rock 
contours of PL VI and in the rock profile of fig. 10. ) 

Very remarkable is the occurrence of a 6-foot bed of rock salt in 
this formation at Bay City, with black shale immediately above and 
below. This occurrence seems to show that the black shale is not a 
deep sea sargasso-like deposit. 

LOWER DEVONIAN AND UPPER SILURIAN LIMESTONES. 
TRAVERSE SERIES (HAMILTON). 

A transition series between the black shales above and the lime- 
stone series below is of slight importance in the south part of the 
State, where it is about 80 feet thick, but rapidly increases in thick- 
ness and in interest toward the north. Along the St. Clair River — at 
Port Huron, and elsewhere — it has thickened to over 300 feet and is 
subdivided as follows: 

Typical section of series betiveen St. Clair black shales and Dundee limestones. 

Feet. 

Hard argillaceous limestone 2 

Shale, argillaceous soapstone _ 12 

Limestones, ' ' top limestones, " argillaceous, often containing gas 80 

Shale. " top soapstone," argillaceous - 150 

Limestone, "middle limestone," argillaceous . _ 4 

Shale, ' ' lower soapstone " . , 65 

Beneath the last member are light-colored Dundee limestones, 
yielding gas and mineral water. The "middle limestone" is not 
always recognized, and the shales are calcareous, so that they may be 
considered alternations of calcareous shales and of argillaceous marls 
or limestones. The division into a top of limestone and a bottom of 
shale can be traced throughout the State. On the north side of the 
basin, from Alpena to Charlevoix and Frankfort, the formation is 500 



DEVONIAN AND SILURIAN LIMESTONES. 



87 



CORRELATION. 




jWtVAVMWt 



fflfflff ffl ffl 



1 



mMm 



MBm 



mm m 



mmgm 



I -l-1-l L l-LLi 



I I i i 



1 ,1,1,1 



CD 



nn 



V 



o 



m 



cm 



i.i.i.i 



Y 



eS. 



DESCRIPTION. 

0-6, sand, 
6-15, gravel, 
15-170, fine sand, 
170-176, gravel, 
176-230, sand; 
at 214, quicksand; 



or 600 feet thick, retaining its marked shale base, and also the ten- 
dency to bluish, richly 
fossiliferous layers; 
but the formation is 
quite varied and dolo- 
mitic, as is seen from 
the Charlevoix and 
Petoskey records. 
(See fig. 13.) 

There are several 
streaks of limestone in 
this formation which 
yield more or less 
water, even in the 
southern part of 
the State, and to the 
north, as shown at 
Charlevoix, it is quite 
freely water bearing. 
There is some reason 
for thinking that the 
Alma well also is still 
in this formation, but 
the principal mineral- 
water horizon is just 
beneath. 



(30-300, blue and brown dolomite 
limestone; 



300-304, "silt" runsin- 

304-314, blue limestone, 

=! 314-327, shale " like put 



•must be incased; 



o 



I I,' I, I I )' 



ffi 



*& 



rp 



rxri 



rr c i t 



C3 



fflmmi 



# ?mmtfv 



ms OT ? 



ti'i'/p '/ ' ';" 



7 ^7777,', ■,» ■ , 



fflBS^aa 



i— i —7— i 






327-387, blue limestone with Acervularia 
davidsom, alternating with brown lime- 
stone; 

at 387 feet, firs/, water ; 



387-443, yellow 
stone ; 



brown dolomite lime- 



at 443, second water ; 



443-482, argillaceous limestone with 
Atrypa reticularis; 



at 482, pure shale, which is probably the 
top of the shale at the bottom of the 
Traverse, i. e., at 430 feet iu Petoskev. 



Fig. 13.— Section of well at Charlevoix, Michigan. 



dundee limestone 
(upper helder- 
berg). 

This formation has 
also been called the 
Corniferous or Macki- 
nac limestone. Lith- 
ologically the upper 
limit of this forma- 
tion is one of the best- 
marked lines that ex- 
tends throughout the 
State. It separates a 
great series of bluish- 
gray or black clayey 
rocks from a great se- 
ries of buff-yellow or 
almost white largely 
calcareous ones. It is 



88 WATER RESOURCES OF LOWER PENINSULA OF MICHIGAN, [no. 30. 

generally very light yellow in color, is full of flint, and is very hard, 
so that the drilling is slow at times. It effervesces very freely with 
acid, and some of the layers rank as the purest limestone of the State, 
containing 98 per cent of calcium carbonate (CaC0 3 ). 

It is almost always more or less permeated with water which is 
charged with hydrogen sulphide (H 2 S) even at Petoskey. When under 
greater cover the water becomes more salty, but is also strongly charged 
with other ingredients than salt — real bittern, or mother liquor — and 
is the most valued mineral water in Michigan. 

The deposit of celestite with native sulphur has been associated by 
Professor Sherzer with the occurrence of traces of strontia (SrO) in 
these sulphureted waters. Frequently, also, oil or gas is encountered. 
In spite of the strength of this brine at times (at Charlotte the spe- 
cific weight is 1.198) it is too impure for salt manufacture, and is 
mainly important medicinally. 

The line between this formation and the one below, being one 
chiefly between limestone and dolomite, can be surely ascertained 
only hy the use of acid. Hence over most of the State the line is still 
very uncertain. 

THE MONROE AND SALINA BEDS (LOWER HELDERBERG). 

These are the oldest beds exposed at the surface in the Lower Penin- 
sula. Not more than 100 or 200 feet of these beds are exposed at the 
surface, but borings reveal over 1,200 feet, if with Orton we include 
in the group the salt beds (Salina). The beds are mainly buff dolo- 
mites and calcareous and argillaceous marls, associated with anhy- 
drite and rock salt. Near the top a bed of the purest white quartz 
sand (often recrystallized), the Sylvania sandstone, extends persist- 
ently across Monroe County and can be traced under cover at least 
as far as Mount Clemens and St. Clair River. This sandstone is, of 
course, a good water bearer. Near Detroit, while at about 200 feet 
the strongly sulphureted waters of the Dundee are reached, at about 
400 feet comparatively fresh potable water is met, and it seems as if 
it might be worth while to develop further this horizon, which is prob- 
ably also encountered in Ypsilanti and Alpena. Below this sandstone 
the salt beds and brines of the Salina are reached. Rock salt is here 
in single layers often over 100 and even 200 feet thick; its aggregate 
thickness can not be estimated. These rock-salt beds extend appar- 
ently beneath (or at any rate skirt) the whole of the peninsula, from 
Alpena and St. Ignace down to a line drawn from Trenton to Muske- 
gon. South of this line there is gypsum (or anhydrite), but not salt. 
A group of six wells at Trenton shows, within a few hundred yards, the 
exact margin of the salt basin. 

This great thickness of salt suggests that there should have been a 
concentration, as at Stassfurt, in Germany, of the rare potash and 
bromine salts in the upper layers. The earlier Sand Beach analyses 



lane.] DEVONIAN AND SILURIAN LIMESTONES. 89 

indicated such concentration, but the water does not now give similar 
results. The Mount Clemens, Somerville Springs, and similar waters 
are clearly of the nature of mother liquors. 

These salt beds, like all the beds, dip away from the St. Clair and 
Detroit rivers to the northwest, but after descending to depths of 
probably 3,000 to 4,000 feet, they rise again, and just north of the 
Straits of Mackinac gypsum beds outcrop. At St. Ignace a thin bed 
of salt is reported only 400 feet below the surface, while at Alpena 
rock salt is encountered within 1,000 or 1,200 feet. Though the Salina 
can not be sharply divided from the formation above or below, the fol- 
lowing arrangement may be suggestive: at the top, dolomites and 
gypseous marl mark a time of desiccation; then comes an arenaceous 
dolomitic limestone passing into a glass sand — the Sylvania sand- 
stone ; then some more beds with gypsum and sometimes with rock salt ; 
then 200 feet or more of somewhat gypsiferous dolomites; and beneath 
them a rapid succession of thick rock-salt beds, marking probably the 
first and greatest period of desiccation. 

NIAGARA AND CLINTON FORMATIONS. 

These formations have been struck only southeast in Monroe 
County, southwest from Kalamazoo, and north at Frankfort. The 
most characteristic part probably belongs to the Guelph formation — 
the churn-drill powder being almost white — a very fine-grained dolo- 
mitic limestone. It answers to Orton's description, and in accord 
with his remarks of the change from southern to northern Ohio, I 
recognize the Rochester 1 shale only at Wyandotte. Generally toward 
the bottom the limestone becomes more ferruginous and, as at Wyan- 
dotte and Dundee, a "red rock," and then the red shales of the Medina 
are reached. Concerning the water resources of this part of the col- 
umn little is known. Water was noted at Dundee from these beds, 
but there is no report of its chemical character. 

HUDSON RIVER AND UTICA SHALES. 

There is next a great series of shales, struck only by a few wells in 
exploring to the Trenton, like those at Dundee, Monroe, and at South 
Bend, Indiana, viz : (1) The Medina red and green shales at Dundee, at 
a depth of 1,625 to 1,725 feet; (2) the Hudson River blue shales, about 
300 or 400 feet thick; (3) the Utica brown or black bituminous shales, 
about 100 feet thick. This series is similar to the Lower Marshall, 
the Cold water (Cuyahoga), and the St. Clair shale series. 

1 The Director of the United States Geological Survey has decided that hereafter in the publi- 
cations of the Survey the term Lockport limestone will be used in place of the term " Niagara 
limestone," and the term Rochester shale in place of the term " Niagara shale,' 1 the wor&Niagara 
being reserved for the designation of some higher classific unit.— Editor. 



90 WATER RESOURCES OF LOWER PENINSULA OF MICHIGAN, [no. 30. 

TRENTON LIMESTONE. 

This formation has been penetrated a few feet at Monroe and at 
Wyandotte, somewhat further at Dundee, and again in the southwest 
part of the State, at Dowagiac. It is really a buff, granular, porous 
dolomite, with traces of gas and oil usually drowned out by a strong 
impure brine. 

ROCK STRUCTURE AND TOPOGRAPHY. 

The general structure of the rock basin, which has been described, 
is well shown by Pis. LXVII to LXX of Vol. V (1895), Pt. II, Michi- 
gan geological survey, which can, however, be improved by use of 
records since received; fig. 10 is a new section from Monroe to Char- 
levoix. The limestones and sandstones of the Traverse, Dundee, and 
Monroe make a rock ridge, which comes to the surface in Monroe 
County, can be distinctly traced as an escarpment, as Spencer has 
remarked, in the bottom of Lake Huron, and reaches land once more 
at Thunder Bay. From that point the ridge, though apparently 
broken beyond Cheboygan by cross valleys, continues nearly around 
to Frankfort, where the rock surface is slightly higher than at Manis- 
tee. The deep valley between this ridge and the Marshall sandstones 
is clearly defined in the well records in the southeastern part of the 
State, and seems to discharge near Algoma, where there is consider- 
able thickness and where the depth to drift is irregular. This shale 
valley was overlooked on the northwest by an abrupt escarpment of 
Marshall sandstone, which is almost everywhere concealed, and yet 
within a mile the depth to rock may vary from less than 10 to 30, 40, 
or even 100 feet. This Marshall sandstone escarpment is more or 
less escalloped and ravined, as was indicated in Hillsdale County, 
and there are probably outlying areas or spurs of sandstone. On 
the main ridge of Marshall sandstone the rock floor is reported to be 
fairly level, and the irregularities in the drift are due to the irregu- 
larities of the moraine ridges, etc. ; but in toward the coal basin, i. e., 
toward Mason County and around Pigeon, in Huron County, there 
is a system of valleys in the rock surface up to 100 feet deep. In the 
lower part of the Michigan series soft beds, easily cut, predominate, 
while the upper part, the Parma sandstone, the Bay Port limestone, 
etc. , is more resistant, and shows an escarpment facing outward at 
least 10 or. more feet vertically, and the valleys, as they traverse it, 
rapidly deepen to more than 100 feet. It is probable that some of 
the limestone masses which have so puzzled Winchell 1 and others 
have been outliers of this escarpment pushed or dragged off from the 
soft shales beneath and left stranded in the drift. They are particu- 
larly conspicuous, as Winchell remarks, in Oceana County, in the 
northwestward extension of the rock divide — which follows the Mar- 

1 Proc. Am. Assoc. Adv. Sci., 1875, p. 36. 



lane.] ROCK STRUCTURE AND TOPOGRAPHY. 91 

shall sandstone around to Holland — near which there are outcrops. To 
the southeast around Allegan, South Haven, and Bangor, the rock sur- 
face is considerably lower. How far the softer Michigan series make 
a trough separating the Marshall ridge from the limestone ridge is 
not yet clear from the well records. Rapid variations in the altitude 
of the rock surface around Grand Rapids make it evident that the 
limestone there is much eroded. Up Grand River, at Ionia, there are 
other outcrops of a sandstone which is probably high up in the coal 
series. The rock ridge can be followed, being occasionally struck 
by wells, to the southeast corner of Newaygo County. From this 
point north the rock surface evidently falls off, for it is so deep that 
no ordinary wells for water encounter it, and it is only from deep 
explorations for salt, oil, or gas that it has been found to fall below 
sea level at Manistee (30 to 40 feet below tide). It is near these low 
points in the rock surface that the large limestone masses are found 
in the drift in Oceana County, and it is not unnatural to suppose that 
this is in a region of strong relief, whose scenery was something like 
that of the driftless area of Wisconsin, full of pinnacles capped with 
limestone. It is here, therefore, that we have carried the stream val- 
ley described on page 83, which seems to drain the most of the coal 
basin surrounded by the Marshall rampart. 

The great depth of drift at Traverse City, with the rock bottom not 
yet reached, compared with Provemont, where the limestone has been 
struck, shows that on the northwest side again the Cold water and St. 
Clair shales make a valley, though outcrops are not far away, and 
other facts go to support the suggestion that the limestone escarp- 
ment on this side was in bold relief and probably severely cut up. 
In all probability Grand Traverse Bay marks some prominent cross 
valley. Beyond Cheboygan Lake the limestone ridge becomes more 
continuous. Throughout the north half of the State the well records 
of depth to rock are so few that the reconstruction of the rock topog- 
raphy is largely guesswork, and it is necessary to fall back on the 
analogies of the relations of moraines to rock ridge in the lower part 
of the State. 

PROSPECTS OF ROCK WELLS. 
NORTHERN LIMESTONE DISTRICT. 

From what has been said in the previous part of this paper in 
connection with the well reports, it appears that there is a district, 
from Alpena and Long Rapids to Charlevoix and north of these 
places, through which it will frequently be necessary, in order to get 
a permanent supply of water, to drill down into the limestone (Trav- 
erse or Dundee), which is often close to the surface. At moderate 
depths, down to about 500 feet, the water, though hard and slightly 
charged with hydrogen sulphide (H 2 S) will be suitable for drinking. 
At greater depths, however, within 1,500 feet, rock salt and brines 
will be encountered. 



92 WATER RESOURCES OF LOWER PENINSULA OF MICHIGAN, [no. 30. 



NORTHERN SHALE DISTRICT. 

Toward the south there is a broad district heavily covered with 
drift, with the rock surface probably a valley in which it will very 
rarely be necessary to go to rock for drinking waters, and in fact the 
prospect for them is not very good. The underlying rocks belong to 
the Carboniferous and Devonian shale series. Only here and there 
will a deep well, drilled for gas, brine, mineral water, etc., penetrate 
to the rock and find mineral water beneath the shales. 

Toward the south side of this district are the sandstones of the 
Lower Marshall ; but little is yet known of their extent. 

COAL BASIN. 

The coal basin occupies the center of the State, including in it the 
Michigan and Upper Marshall series. The basin extends from Tawas 
Bay probably well up toward Otsego Lake, thence to Ludington and 
Hart, thence down to Hillsdale County (as shown on the map, PI. VI). 
Throughout this district the structure of the rocks is favorable for 
artesian wells, and inside the belt of moraine that surrounds it there 
is a very fair chance of getting a flow of water, as at Birch Run, Mid- 
land, Bay Port, Sebewaing, and elsewhere. Near the margin of this 
basin the Upper Marshall sandstone furnishes an abundant supply of 
the purest water. Toward the center of the basin the overlying 
Michigan series, with their highly mineralized waters, must be cased 
off if drinking water is desired. Still nearer the center of the basin 
almost all the water is slightly saline, but is still quite potable. The 
limits of the saline waters are roughly shown in fig. 14 (e. g., deeper 
wells of Saginaw, Ithaca, etc.). The deepest waters now become 
strong brines, the Upper Marshall becoming remarkably charged 
with bromine, as at Alma, Midland, and Big Rapids. 

SOUTHERN SHALE DISTRICT. 

This district, being the southern counterpart of the northern shale 
district, is the only part of the State where there is any serious difficulty 
in getting a satisfactory supply of water. It is divided into two parts 
by the projection of the Marshall sandstone nearly to the Michigan- 
Ohio-Indiana State boundary. To the southwest there are usually, 
but not always, ponds and lakes enough for city supplies, and the 
heavy deposits of overwash valley drift give numerous chances for 
wells in surface deposits. To the southeast, however, there are prac- 
tically no lakes below the 800-foot contour. The surface deposits are 
largely lake clays and clay till, and the underlying rocks shales with 
subordinate sandstone streaks. These sandstones are likely to be 
salty or unpleasantly charged with gases. In this region, if a perma- 
nent supply can be obtained from cisterns or from the surface gravel 
ridges, that is probably often the best obtainable, provided due pre- 
cautions are taken against surface contamination. The Berea sand- 



LANE.] 



PROSPECTS OF ROCK WELLS. 



93 



stone seems to be usually salty. It might be worth while to see how- 
far the sulphureted waters of the Dundee could be cased out and a 




Fig. 14.— Map showing areas of shallow saline waters in Michigan. 

good supply obtained from the Sylvania sandstone. There is no diffi- 
culty in this region in getting mineral waters, especially sulphureted. 



94 WATER RESOURCES OF LOWER PENINSULA OF MICHIGAN, [no. 30. 



SOUTHEASTERN LIMESTONE DISTRICT. 

There only remains to be considered the limestone district of Monroe 
and southeastern Wayne counties. Here wells just down to or a lit- 
tle way in the rock encounter plenty of water, generally flowing 
chalybeate, hard, and highly charged with hydrogen sulphide (H 2 S). 
There are plentiful flows of fresh water all the way down, until at 800 
feet or less the gypsum and salt layers begin. Naturally the wells 
draining from the Sylvania sandstone seem to have the best supply, 
and it might be worth while to go down to it a little farther under 
cover. 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. 

General acknowledgment is due to a large number of persons who 
have rendered assistance, mainly by replies to schedules. Thanks 
are particularly due to L. L. Hubbard, State geologist of Michigan, 
for free use of data accumulated by the survey and for assistance in 
many other ways; also to my colleagues on the survey; to Prof . C. A. 
Davis for information, especially as to Tuscola County, and for hints 
too numerous to mention; to Prof. W. H. Sherzer and Mr. Cramer for 
information, especially concerning the southeastern part of the State ; 
and to Dr. C. H. Gordon for information relating to Sanilac County 
and for hints as to Pleistocene deposits. In this last matter Mr. F. B. 
Taylor and Mr. Frank Leverett have assisted not only by their pub- 
lications but by their kindly criticism. Especially in PI. II data for 
the southwest part of the State are derived almost wholly from unpub- 
lished notes which Mr. Leverett kindly furnished, for the form of 
which, however, I am entirely responsible. The map in PI. VII gives 
the location of those places from which reports have been received, 
and also indicates the location of public waterworks so far as can be 
ascertained from these reports, from the Manual of American Water- 
works (1897), and from the Michigan Gazetteer. It also indicates, by 
a special sign, those localities near which flowing wells are reported. 
It may thus serve to indicate how thoroughly the ground has been 
covered and in what parts of the State information is still scanty. 
Above Saginaw Bay the population is sparse. 

The paper is least satisfactory in regard to the water powers of the 
region considered. Those who know the facts consider them too 
valuable to publish. In this connection the paper by Mr. -Robert 
E. Horton is a welcome addition. The water powers northwest of 
Saginaw Bay seem especially worth exploiting. 

Finally, to the State weather service, C. F. Schneider, director, I 
am indebted for meteorological data. 



INDEX. 



Page. 

Ada, water power at — 21 

Allegan, rainfall at 26 

Allen Creek, water power on 19 

Alma, depth of drift at 72 

depth to rock at 83 

temperature of wells at 56 

water supply of 16,48 

Almena, water power at 22 

Alpena, water power at .. 20 

Alpine, water power at 21 

Ann Arbor, water power at 40 

Apple Creek, water power on 21 

Au Ores River, water power on 20 

Au Sable River, water power on 20 

Barryton, water power at 19 

Battle Creek, rainfall at 26 

Battle Creek, discharge of <- 32 

Bay City, use of water at 16 

Bay Port, temperature of wells at - 57 

Bay View, water supply of 16 

Bear Creek, water power on. 21 

Bear River, water power on 20 

Belleville, water power at - 39 

Benzonia, water power at 20 

Berea shale, character of water from 84-85 

Betsie River, water power on 20 

Big Rapids, depth to rock at 83 

water power at 21 

Big Sable River, water power on 21 

Birmingham, water supply of 16 

Black River, water power on 19 

Boardman River, water power on 20 

Boyne Falls, water power at 20 

Boyne River, water power on.. 20 

Buck Creek, water power on 21 

Caledonia, water power at 21 

Cannon, water power at 21 

Carex,bog land formed of 65 

Caro, water power at 19 

Carpenter, R.C., cited on swamp drain- 
age 24 

Carp River, water power on 20 

Cascade, water power at 21 

Cass River, water powers on .- 19 

Cedar Creek, water power on 21 

Charlevoix , section of well at 87 

water supply of 16 

Cheboygan, water supply of 16 

Cheboygan River, water power on 20 

Chippewa River, water power on 19 

Clam Lake, variation in 17 

Clinton formation , occurrence of 89 

Clinton River, water power on 18 

Coal basin, extent of 92 



Page. 

Cold water River, water power on 21 

Coldwater shales, character of water 

from 84 

Coleman, depth of drift at 72 

Concord , rainfall at 26 

Cooley, L. E., aid by 45 

Corunna, water power at.. 19 

Crockery Creek, water power on 21 

Crosman, Charles, cited on fluctuations of 

lakelevel 30 

Crystal Creek, water power on 21 

Cy per us, bog land formed of 65 

Davis, C. A. , acknowledgments to 94 

observations by - 56 

quoted on lakes of Michigan 64 

reference to 44,72 

work with 79 

Deadman, W. EL, mentioned 42 

Delhi, water power at 40 

Detroit River drainage, water power in. 18 

Dexter, water power at 41 

Drainage, glacial 60 

peculiarities of 62 

reversed 63 

Drift, depth of - 72,74 

thickness of 75 

Duck Lake, water power on 20 

Dundee limestone, character and water- 
bearing qualities of 87-88 

typical section between St. Clair 

shales and 86 

Eaton Rapids, water power at 21 

Elk Rapids, water power at 20 

Elk River, water power on 20 

Fall, D., mentioned . 42 

Fallossburg, water power at 21 

Fawn River, water power on 21 

Flat River, water power on 21 

Flat Rock, water power at 39 

Flint River, water power on 19 

Fosters Station, water power at 40 

Glacial drainage of Michigan 60 

Glaciation in Michigan 58-60 

Gordon, C. H., acknowledgments to 94 

Grand Ledge, water power at 21 

Grand Rapids, water power at - 21 

Grand River, discharge of 32 

water power on 21,22 

watershed between the Saginaw 13 

Grayling, water power at. 20 

Great Lakes, transportation on 12 

Greenleaf, James L., cited on water 

power of Huron River 38 

Hamilton, C. E., cited on swamp drainage 24 

95 



1895. 

Sixteenth Annual Report of the United States Geological Survey, 1804-9o, Part II, 
Papers of an economic character, 1895; octavo, 598 pp. 

Contains a paper on the public lands and their water supply, by F. H. Newell, illustrated 
by a large map showing the relative extent and location of the vacant public lands; also a 
report on the water resources of a portion of the Great Plains, by Robert Hay. 

A geological reconnoissance of northwestern Wyoming, by George H. Eldridge, 
1894: octavo, 72 pp. Bulletin No. 119 of the United States Geological Survey; 
price, 10 cents. 

Contains a description of the geologic structure of portions of the Bighorn Range and 
Bighorn Basin, especially with reference to the coal fields, and remarks upon the water 
supply and agricultural possibilities. 

Report of progress of the division of hydrography for the calendar years 1893 and 
1894, by F. H. Newell, 1895; octavo, 176 pp. Bulletin No. 131 of the United 
States Geological Survey; price, 15 cents. 

Contains results of stream measurements at various points, mainly within the arid region, 
and records of wells in a number of counties in western Nebraska, western Kansas, and 
eastern Colorado. 

1896. 

Seventeenth Annual Report of the United States Geological Survey, 1895-96, Part 
II, Economic geology and hydrography, 1896; octavo, 864 pp. 

Contains papers oh "The underground water of the Arkansas Valley in eastern Colo- 
rado," by G. K. Gilbert; "The water resources of Illinois," by Frank Leverett; and "Pre- 
liminary report on the artesian areas of a portion of the Dakotas," by N. H. Darton. 

Artesian-well prospects in the Atlantic Coastal Plain region, by N. H. Darton, 
1896; octavo, 230 pp., 19 plates. Bulletin No. 138 of the United States Geolog- 
ical Survey; price, 20 cents. 

Gives a description of the geologic conditions of the coastal region from Long Island, 
N. Y., to Georgia, and contains data relating to many of the deep wells. 

Report of progress of the division of hydrography for the calendar year 1895, by 
F. H. Newell, hydrographer in charge, 18U6; octavo, 356 pp. Bulletin No. 140 
of the United States Geological Survey; price, 25 cents. 

Contains a description of the instruments and methods employed in measuring streams 
and the results of hydrographic investigations in various parts of the United States. 

1S97. 

Eighteenth Annual Report of the United States Geological Survey, 1896-97, Part 
IV, Hydrography, 1897; octavo, 756 pp. 

Contains a " Report of progress of stream measurements for the year 1896," by Arthur 
P. Davis; "The water resources of Indiana and Ohio," by Frank Leverett; "New devel- 
opments in well boring and irrigation in South Dakota," by N. H. Darton; and " Reservoirs 
for irrigation," by J. D. Schuyler. 

1898. 

Nineteenth Annual Report of the United States Geological Survey, 1897-98, Part 
IV, Hydrography, 1899; octavo, 814 pp. 

Contains a " Report of progress of stream measurements for the calendar year 1897," by 
F. H. Newell and others; " The rock waters of Ohio," by Edward Orton; and " Preliminary 
report on the geology and water resources of Nebraska west of the one hundred and third 
meridian," by N. H. Darton. 

Water-Supply and Irrigation Papers, 1896-1899. 

This series of papers is designed to present in pamphlet form the results of stream meas- 
urements and of special investigations. A list of these, with other information, is given on 
the outside (or fourth) page of this cover. 

Survey bulletins can be obtained only by prepayment of cost, as noted above. 
Postage stamps, checks, and drafts can not be accepted. Money should be trans- 
mitted by postal money order or express order, made payable to the Director of 
the United States Geological Survey. Correspondence relating to the publications 
of the Survey should be addressed to The Director, United States Geological 
Survey, Washington, D. C. 

IRR30 



WATER-SUPPLY AKD IRRIGATION PAPERS. 

1. Pumping water for irrigation, by Herbert M. Wilson, 1896. A 

2. Irrigation near Phoenix, Arizona, by Arthur P. Davis, 1897. 
■ 3. Sewage irrigation, by George W. Rafter, 1897. 

4. A reconnoissance in southeastern Washington, by Israel C. Russell, 1897. 

5. Irrigation practice on the Great Plains, by E. B. Cowgill, 1897. 

6. Underground waters of southwestern Kansas, by Erasmus Haworth, 1897. 

7. Seepage waters of northern Utah, by Samuel Fortier, 1897. 

8. Windmills for irrigation, by E. C. Murphy, 1897. 

9. Irrigation near Greeley, Colorado, by David Boyd, 1897. 
[0. Irrigation in Mesilla Valley, New Mexico, by F. C. Barker, 1898. 

11. River heights for 1896, by Arthur P. Davis, 1897. 

12. Water resources of southeastern Nebraska, by Nelson Horatio Darton, 1898. 

13. Irrigation systems in Texas, by William Ferguson Hutson, 1898. 

14. New tests of certain pumps and water lifts used in irrigation, by O. P. Hood, 
1898. 

15. Operations at river stations, 1897, Part I, 1898. 

16. Operations at river stations, 1897, Part II, 1898. 

17. Irrigation near Bakersfield, California, by C. E. Grunsky, 1898. 

18. Irrigation near Fresno, California, by C. E. Grunsky, 1898. 

19. Irrigation near Merced, California, by C. E. Grunsky, 1899. 

20. Experiments with windmills, by Thomas O. Perry, 1899. 

21. Wells of northern Indiana, by Frank Leverett, 1899. 

22. Sewage irrigation, Part II, by George W. Rafter, 1899. 

23. Water-right problems in the Bighorn Mountains, by Elwood Mead, 1899. 
24! Water resources of the State of New York, Part I, by George W. Rafter, 1899. 

25. Water resources of the State of New York, Part II, by George W. Rafter, 1899. 

26. Wells of Southern Indiana, by Frank Leverett, 1899. 

27. Operations at river stations, 1898, Part I, 1899. 

28. Operations at river stations, 1898, Part II, 1899. 

29. Wells and windmills in Nebraska, by Erwin Hinckley Barbour, 1899. 

30! Water resources of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan, by Alfred C. Lane, 

1899. 

In addition to the above there are, in various stages of preparation, other papers, 
relating to the measurement of streams, the storage of water, the amount available 
from underground sources, the efficiency of windmills, the cost of pumping, and 
other details relating to the methods of utilizing the water resources of the coun- 
try. Provision has been made for printing these by the following clause m the 
sundry civil act making appropriations for the year 1896-97: 

Provided, That hereafter the reports of the Geological Survey in relation to the 
gauging of streams and to the methods of utilizing ^ water resources may be 
printed in octavo form, not to exceed 100 pages in length and 5,000 copies m num- 
ber; 1,000 copies of which shall be for the official use of the geological Survey, 
1 500 copies shall be delivered to the Senate, and 2,500 c oP} es / ha l\ b ^ h ^f T to 
the House of Representatives, for distribution. (Approved, June 11, 1896, Stat. L. , 
vol. 29, p. 453.) 

The maximum number of copies available for the use of the Geological Survey 
is 1 000. This number falls far short of the demand, so that it is impossible to 
meet all requests. Attempts are made to send these pamphlets to persons who 
have rendered assistance in their preparation through replies to schedules or dona- 
tion of data. Requests specifying a certain paper and stating a reason for asking 
for it are attended to whenever practicable rbut it is impossibleto comply with 
general requests, such as to have all of the series sent indiscriminately. 

Application for these papers should be made either to members of Congress or to 
The Director, 

United States Geological Survey, 

Washington, D. C. 

irr 30 

G. P. 0., Apr., '05- 



